Being Normal
by Dal Niente
Summary: It's all he'll ever want, it's all he'll never have. Or will he? Megamind wishes he had something like a normal life. Collaboration between me and KarenBJones!
1. Sick of It

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten Twelve Days! But there are all kinds of prompts up on Livejournal for the holidays—sort of an advent calendar thing—and I had to post a couple of one-shots for Angst Day.

It was Angst Day. I mean come on. All I ever write for this fandom is angst! I'm not going to pass that up.

So anyway, this was one of the things I posted. It started as just a one-shot called Sick of it, and that's the first chapter. It's been edited to be in present tense because KarenBJones and I started collaborating down in the comments over on Livejournal. She started it by posting a little continuation, and then I continued it, and then she continued that, and…well, one thing led to another and the whole thing took off. There was zero planning involved.

Now, if you're anything like me, you see an author with an unfinished multichapter and a bunch of new stuff, and you tend to be really skeptical about whether that multichapter is ever going to get finished. This is my promise to you: I'm still working hard on Twelve Days. Updates take a while because I am trying not to aggravate my carpal tunnels, but I have not and will not abandon it.

This is just for fun. ^^

**Chapter 1: Sick of it**

Oh, he knows it's creepy. He just doesn't care. He's finding it sort of difficult to give much of a crap about anything other than Minion, these days—ever since Metro Man warned him away from Roxanne in the romantic, social sense. And just when he'd been starting to wonder if _maybe_, maybe it would be possible someday, too!

Really, screw all of it. He is resolved: no more kidnapping Roxanne. He's getting too into her if even _Metro Man_ can tell. If _he_ can, then the public _definitely_ could, and Megamind isn't supposed to have a heart. He isn't allowed to feel those kinds of things. Not for a human, not for anyone. He's ruthless, he's cruel, he runs around the law and enjoys doing it. He certainly doesn't have _feelings_.

But…

But there he is crouched in the shadows on Roxanne's balcony, watching her turn the pages of some really boring-looking file and hoping she wouldn't look up and see him peering through the glass. Watching her frown at the pages and make notes. Watching her rub her lips together really hard, the way she only does when she's very, very annoyed at something.

At least he isn't the only one having a crappy week. But it isn't as though he _cares_ about that—

_No, you know what?_ he thinks suddenly. _I do. I _do_ care about that, as a matter of fact; that's all I've ever cared about. My shitty excuse for an existence_.

He never wanted this, originally; he'd wanted physics and mechanical engineering. And he'd found that in villainy. But he hadn't found much of anything even remotely resembling the life he would have bothered wanting if he'd ever thought he had a _choice_. If he'd had a choice, he would have been normal, with hair and a human skin color. He isn't even particularly picky about _which_ skin color; he just doesn't want to be _blue_ anymore. If he weren't blue—well, and if he weren't evil, too, there's that to consider as well—he could have gone up to Roxanne's apartment in the elevator like a _normal_ person, knocked on the door like a _normal_ person, and maybe she'd let him in like a _normal_ person and they could have had a _normal_ conversation about _normal_ things.

Things he _wants_ to talk about. Such as, maybe, as a non-specific example, how he feels about her. If he were _normal_, he'd have been allowed to have feelings for her. And if he were normal, maybe—just _maybe_—she'd listen and be willing to give him a try. And then once that was out in the open, they could sit and talk about normal things like what they hoped would happen, things they thought or dreamed. Normal people are allowed to hope things and dream things.

But of course that's a stupid thing to wish for. Megamind isn't normal and never will be, so hoping is pointless and dreaming is stupid and feeling only ever gets him hurt. All he's allowed to do is wait outside in the dark and _watch_. And try not to think about how things might be different.

So that's what he does until he can't feel his feet anymore, and then he leaves. He knows he'll be back, though. Of course he'll come back; he _always _comes back. Always, no matter how hard he tries to stay away, he always comes back to Roxanne.

He is sick of it. Sick to death of the whole stupid thing; all he wants was to be normal. That's all. But evidently it's just too much to ask; it's all he'd ever wanted and it's all he'll never get.


	2. Pen-Pals?

This is where Karen and I started going on together – she posted a thing, the first segment, and then I posted a response a couple days later because her post wouldn't get out of my head! And then she replied, and then I replied, and things…went from there. XD

Anyway, everything is totally unedited, because if we started editing it then we'd want to add things and do more stuff. At least, _I _would, because that's what happens when I edit. I don't know about Karen, but I always end up taking bits out and putting bits in; it's annoying but this is why the versions of the fanfics on my livejournal are very slightly different from those here on fanfiction net. ANYWAY, the point is, there will be typos and things in our postings because livejournal does not let you edit comments when people have replied to them. Everything here is untouched.

It starts with Karen's segment, and then when you see —..—..—..—..—, it switches to my segment. That's why the formatting sometimes is different. If that's incredibly distracting, let me know and we'll try something else; we don't want to upset the flow of the story but we _do_ want to just post it in its original form.

The only pieces I've removed are things like us saying "I'm going to be offline so I can't reply, blah blah."

Edit: Holy schlamoly the italics went wonky in this one! Something to do with the copying and pasting, I think. Should be fixed, now.

Enjoy!

**Chapter 2: Pen-Pals?**

Roxanne opens the door to her balcony, spreading the doors wide to the cool night breeze. She turns to take the sweater she'd tossed over the back of her couch earlier. It's fuzzy warmth makes the chilly air bearable, though she knows she'll only stay out a few minutes. She doesn't know why she feels compelled sometimes to stand out here at her balcony rail at night. Sometimes she wonders if her apartment is haunted. She swears sometimes she feels as if she's being watched and there's sometimes a strange sense of melancholy lingering here right by the rail. But the presence she feels is never malevolent, so it doesn't frighten her. It's almost comforting, though sad. She stands there until the feeling dissipates, carried off in the wind. Then she moves inside, her feet stepping away from the spot so recently vacated by her own personal villain.

—..—..—..—..—

Weeks turn into months turn into nearly two years, and the strange presence comes and goes seemingly at random. Sometimes it's there two days in a row, sometimes she doesn't catch a whiff of it for weeks at a stretch. Once—only once, in mid-December—she ran into it near the sofa upon returning home from work late one night. That was the only time she'd ever felt its presence inside, and then the vaguely sad feeling was almost lost behind an almost overwhelming sense of grief and rage although she's sure it isn't directed at her.

She briefly considers hiring a psychic, then decides against it. Why bother? Whatever it is, it's not hurting her. It's sort of nice, actually, though she does wish she knew what was causing it. And she's starting to think she doesn't _need_a psychic; she's getting better about picking up on it. It's almost always in that left corner by her balcony rail. She isn't sure if it's getting stronger or if she's slowly growing more attuned to it, but once or twice she thinks she's felt it materialize, then dissipate.

The sense is stronger after rain. That was a disconcerting revelation, because it probably means that whatever It is, It's not purely metaphysical. Something or someone might be leaving these traces, might be watching her. Roxanne takes a long time to process this possibility. It's not hurting her. It's not malevolent, just sad; she's always been _very_good about picking up on emotions and she knows what faking feels like. This isn't faked. It could very well just be a friendly ghost. Somehow, weird things and people seem to just find her—she wouldn't be at all surprised if this turned out to be something like that.

Finally, she reaches a decision, and leaves a note taped to the balcony rail.

_I don't know who or what you are. I don't know if you're watching me specifically, but if you are, I've tentatively decided that's okay provided you don't start stalking me around town and you stay outside. Don't come in here._

_There's a lamp in the corner by the stereo I never use. If I ever _don't _want you watching me, that lamp will be lit._

_You respect my boundaries, and I'll respect yours._

_-R Ritchi_

—..—..—..—..—

Two days later, the note disappears, replaced by another written in a neat, precise hand. "How did you know I was here?" It is unsigned.

She writes back, "I can feel you sometimes. What are you? Are you a ghost?"

"Not a ghost."

"Then what are you?"

"It doesn't matter. I wouldn't want to scare you."

"I don't scare easy. I have a Supervillain and a Superhero fighting over me just about every week. I have a high tolerance for the weird."

And thus begins her correspondence with the entity she begins to think of as her ghost, although he claims he isn't a ghost at all.

—..—..—..—..—

At first she wonders if it's Wayne. It would explain how he gets up to her balcony, but she knows his handwriting and it doesn't match that of her ghost penpal. Besides, it would never occur to the hero that he might scare her.

—..—..—..—..—

After almost a month with no response, she starts to wonder if she's scared him—her? them?—off. Finally she leaves another note:

_If you don't want to tell me, that's okay. And if you want me to stop leaving notes, that's also okay, just let me know. I might be able to pick up on your presence but I'm far from telepathic._

_Speaking of okay things. Are you?_

—..—..—..—..—

"Okay? I'm not sure if I've ever been okay. But I've learned to deal with it. Don't worry. I won't hurt you.

I think I'd like to correspond with you. Tell me about your day. What's it like to be a normal person?"

—..—..—..—..—

_I know you won't hurt me, but dealing with it is not the same as being okay. Trust me on that one._

_Today was good. Went to work, talked to people. I have to go downtown in a couple days to shoot some footage for a piece we're doing. Near Patron Street. Concealed carry, don't fail me now, right?_

_I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific about normality. I'm not really sure what you mean. You aren't normal?_

—..—..—..—..—

"Does a normal person correspond anonymously with people by notes left on a 30th floor balcony? No, I'm not normal in the least. If you saw me, you'd understand. There's no mistaking me for normal. Not here.

"Sometimes dealing with it is your only option. Some things you just can't fix. I'm not okay, but I'm not suicidal, if that's what you're worried about. That would be giving up, and I'm far too stubborn for that.

"Don't worry about Patron Street, no one will touch you."

—..—..—..—..—

She has to blink at that one. She hadn't really thought her ghost would be _that_bad, but...well, all right, she had been pushing a little, so maybe he'd thought she was more worried than she is. Probably best to pull back a little bit on that particular subject, although she would like to know what it is he thinks he can't fix.

Everyone on Patron Street is surprisingly civil to her, even when she has Hal stop the van so she can ask for directions. Maybe her ghost is from the area and knows it's not as bad as everyone makes it sound? She certainly hasn't heard anything particularly good about this part of town, but he'd sounded fairly confident.

She waits until the evening after that to leave a response outside.

_Well, considering I'm the one who started talking to you, I'd say I'm not exactly normal, either. I think there are varying degrees of normal. People's lives usually look pretty standard when you're outside looking in, but I've found that everyone has their little quirks and battles. What makes you think _I'm _normal? How many 'normal' people wouldn't have a problem with knowing there might be somebody on their balcony right now? How many 'normal' people get kidnapped on a more or less regular basis and are totally fine with it?_

_You said there could be no mistaking_ you _for normal. Is it just that you look different, then?_

_Also, this is possibly the least effective method of communication I've ever heard of. Fun, but not very effective. You could text me, you know, if you'd like updates about what a 'normal' life is like._

She jots down her number at the bottom of the page, a little smile on her lips as she does so. She knows giving her phone number to a total stranger probably isn't a good idea, but...well, for heaven's sake. She's been picking up on this person's emotional signature for nearly two years. He's hardly a stranger.

—..—..—..—..—

A few days later her cell phone chirps at her to alert her to a new text from an unlisted number she doesn't recognize. The message is typed out in proper English with all the right punctuation. No textspeak at all.

"You're fine with being kidnapped? Perhaps I was wrong about you. That isn't normal. You should be terrified."

—..—..—..—..—

She'd expected to be a little bit pleased if her ghost actually did end up texting her. Pleased, happy, something like that. She had _not _expected to beam delightedly, nor had she expected to feel this excited. At first she considers responding with proper grammar and punctuation, then dismisses the idea—if he has problems understanding, he'll probably tell her.

_please, not like hes gonna hurt me. i used to worry about that, not so much these days._

_also hi! how r u? u just made my monday 6 times more interesting :)_

—..—..—..—..—

Almost immediately, her ghost responds to her.

"He aims machine guns and flamethrowers at your head! And there are alligators! What is more evil than leaping alligators snapping at your feet? And you're sitting there tied hand and foot, completely helpless! What about that can possibly lead you to the conclusion that he's not going to hurt you? He has 72 life sentences. He's killed 12 people to date. And you're not even worried? Please explain to me how this is possible. What is he doing wrong?"

—..—..—..—..—

Her eyes narrow. Okay, make that interesting to the power of 6. Her first inclination is to think this is some other reporter trying to weasel more information out of her, maybe the feds, but...there is the emotional residue on her balcony to consider.

So she bites her lip and replies, _i didn't say he isn't dangerous. he could hurt me if he wanted to. i just don't think he wants to._

_and in case ur interested, normal people get yelled at by their bosses. what do u do for a living?_

—..—..—..—..—

She gets an immediate response. She begins to wonder if giving her ghost her number was a really a good idea.

"You think a 'dangerous' supervillain cares if he hurts his hostage?"

Then, before she can reply, a second message.

"I'm self-employed. Is your boss yelling at you for texting at work?"

—..—..—..—..—

Good lord, he texts quickly. Thumbs like the wind. But he raises an interesting point—does Megamind care if he hurts her?

She begins three texts and deletes them before finally settling on,

_i don't think he used to care. now im not so sure. but i figure he owes me that much for playing his little games and letting my schedule take his hits. u have any idea how many bridges ive burnd cuz of him? those kidnappings are a pain in the butt for someone whose income revolves around schedules and interviews! if they were a physical pain as well…i wanna say id kick his ass but hes a lot tougher than he looks. and why do u care so much about Mm?_

_no. hes just having a bad day and taking it out on the rest of us. as usual. hope ur day is going better than mine._

—..—..—..—..—

This time his response is slower. His? She still isn't sure if her ghost is male or female, but for some reason she thinks he's male. Maybe it's a psychic impression. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking and an indication that she really needs to find a boyfriend.

She wonders for the umpteenth time what her ghost looks like. How has he been getting up to her balcony? Since it's obvious by now that he's an actual person and not a ghost, is he a super? If he can fly, that would explain things rather well. Especially since supers often have unusual appearances that set them off from normal humans. If it comes right down to it, of course, he might not even be a human. Extraterrestrials aren't common, but she knows Megamind and Minion aren't the only ones on the planet.

Lost in thought, the chirp of her phone makes her jump and she feels momentarily guilty for mooning over her ghost when she should be working. Still, she delays another moment to check the message.

"I don't care about Megamind. Do you? You brought up the subject as part of an argument for why you are less normal than I believe you are. I'm not certain if I'm convinced, but if it makes you feel better, I'll concede that you're probably stranger than you appear to be. You're still normal compared to me, though.

"My day is going well, actually. My assistant is out running errands, so I have the place to myself. There's no one here to disapprove of my texting away the morning if I like. But if you're busy, I can get back to my blueprints. I wouldn't want to disturb you. It sounds like you already have enough disruptions to your schedule as it is. I wouldn't want to cause you more inconvenience than necessary."

—..—..—..—..—

The comment about blueprints makes her raise her eyebrows. Self-employed? Is he an architect, or some kind of inventor? Maybe an independent contractor of some kind? And he has an assistant who is "out running errands," implying that usually the assistant is on hand. That's definitely different.

One thing is certain, though, she wants to know for sure if her ghost is a man or a woman. Or somewhere in between.

_care isn't the right word for it. hes definitely a fairly major part of my life, though. and i should get back to work, i'll txt you again later? maybe tell you what the stranger side of 'normal' eats for dinner? :)_

_one last question, can i ask what your pronouns are?_

There, she thinks, that ought to do it. That's not offensive, and it saves him—or not him—from having to explain if he isn't human.

—..—..—..—..—

He should stop this right now. Megamind knows this is going to just explode in his face eventually. What is he thinking? It's one thing to watch her from a distance, but to carry on a correspondence with her? As if they're friends? As if they _could be _friends? He leans forward with his elbows on his thighs and his face in his hands. His chair creaks with the movement and a brainbot floats over to lubricate the mechanism without being asked.

She'll figure it out, he thinks. She's the smartest person he knows, besides himself. Of course she'll figure it out. What will she say when she does? Does it matter? Just as he knows it's a bad idea, he knows he won't stop. He'll see it through to the inevitable, disastrous end like he does with every plan.

He reads her latest message on his phone and his black heart warms just a bit. He still knows it won't work, but reading her admit that he's a major part of her life? How can he read that and not feel a tiny spark of hope? His brow furrows in puzzlement over the last line. Pronouns? What does she mean by... Oh! She still doesn't know if her mysterious stalker is male or female.

"I'm male," he texts her.

"good 2 know." her own text responds, "l8r, mr. ghost."

"Good day, Miss Ritchi."


	3. Friends

So we start with me, this time! And it progresses from there. This was a really fun and interesting section to do because, the whole time, neither of us had any idea what the other was going to come up with! So at one point, Karen says there's broken glass. And I am like, "Crap. I don't know where she's going with this glass stuff. I'll just not do anything too specific and let her decide what the crisis was because I set this thing up but have no idea what to do with it."

It was really fun.

We own nothing! Don't sue us!

**Chapter 3: Friends**

Days go by, but she doesn't call him out. A week passes without incident, with her texting him at random about things normal people do, teasing him lightly about how they both enjoy a good bowl of tomato soup every now and then and maybe he's not so abnormal after all, has he ever considered that? He responds with similarly mild jabs and light conversation about everything and nothing at all. Two weeks. Once, he even has her run a quick internet search for him because he's too busy to get up and turn on one of the monitors—he really should upgrade his phone. And somewhere in the latter half of those two weeks, there's an actual kidnapping and she _still_doesn't treat him any differently. She must not know.

He goes over to her place at one point, but she's not at home. She texts him, though, later that night. _hey. everything okay?__  
_  
_I'm fine,_ he assures her, safely home in the Lair, _just still very confused about this turn of events. Also, how in the name of science itself did you know I was there tonight?__  
_  
_i cant explain it really. just a feeling. is it just me or are u really fond of that left corner?__  
_  
A couple of nights after that, the lamp is lit. He stays away, but texts her. _That light is on. Are you all right?__  
_  
All she sends back is, _tomorrow__._

He waits all day for her to text him, but she never does. He considers texting her instead, but decides against it; he doesn't know what's going on or if it was something he said—God, does she know?—or if she's just having a bad couple of days.

Two nights later, his phone buzzes and he dives for it. _can u come. i wont look._

—..—..—..—..—

"On my way," he texts her. He straps his degun holster onto his hip and checks that the weapon is settled properly into it's spot. He crooks his finger to beckon a brainbot towards him "Where are the car keys?" he asks his creature in a whisper. The little bot whizzes off and is back in a moment, keys in talon. Megamind creeps silently across the lair to the car.

Minion looks up when he hears the car door slam, but it's too late for the spacefish to question his master because the car is already moving toward the door. He shrugs his robot gorilla shoulders and turns back to watching Downton Abbey.

Megamind races invisibly through the familiar city streets towards Roxanne's apartment. He screeches to a halt in a firezone and parks the car there. Two brainbots follow him out of the car and carry him silently up to her balcony. Dropping lightly to the floor, he waves his creatures away. They fly upwards to crouch like steampunk gargoyles upon the corners of the building, their lights dimming to near-black as they watch and wait to be called on again.

He hesitates. What should he do now? He steps to her door and opens it just far enough to slip into the dark living room. He stands there listening and letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He can see better than a human in dim light, but even he can only make out vague shapes and shadows here. He wants to call her name, but if he speaks, she might recognize his voice. This isn't the time to reveal his identity. Certainly not before he knows what's going on, anyway. It would only complicate things.

Something crunches under his heel as he steps away from the door. He glances down and makes out a slight reflection on a smooth surface. Glass. His stomach drops. He thought she was merely upset about something and needed company. But broken glass doesn't fit that picture. Is she actually in trouble? If she is, why would she call him and not Metro Man?

He opens his phone and texts her "I'm here." He hears the chime of her phone coming from behind the bathroom door, which is nearly closed with light leaking past at the edges. He approaches and knocks quietly at the doorframe.

—..—..—..—..—

After a moment, the door swings open. As soon as the knob starts to turn he's away and crouched in the shadows behind her couch, but a quick peek shows him she isn't there and the light in the bathroom is off. "Um—Roxanne?" That should be safe, he reasons. Megamind never calls her Roxanne.

"You can come in," she calls, her voice slightly muffled. "The light is off and I'm sitting in the shower with the curtain closed, I can't see anything."

Well, she _sounds _all right, there's that at least. He slowly goes back over to the bathroom and, after wavering on the threshold for a moment, steps inside and closes the door behind him, plunging the room into almost darkness before sitting down with his back against the door.

"I'm. I didn't actually think you'd come," she says after a long few seconds and while she sounds a little nasal her voice isn't shaking. Much.

_Shit. I'm actually going to have to talk. _He swallows his panic and settles on whispering, knowing it makes identifying voices nearly impossible. "Of course I came."

"You could've said no."

This is probably true, since they've built this whole thing on secrecy, after all. But it honestly hadn't occurred to him. "Is...are you okay? There's broken glass all over by the balcony."

"Oh, that." She sniffs. "That was probably the vase. Don't worry about it."

"Or you, either?" he quips, mostly to hide the fact that he's really starting to worry.

"Or me, either." There's a soft rustling from behind the curtain as she changes position.

"What _happened?_" he bursts out, quite forgetting to whisper. He also isn't using his usual vocal cadence, though, so there's still a good chance she won't pick up on who he really is even if he does speak aloud. "Why is your apartment dark? Why are you hiding in the bathroom? Please, tell me you aren't hurt."

—..—..—..—..—

"I'm not hurt," she sniffs but something tells him she's lying.

"Close your eyes," he orders her. His normal theatrical accent is an affectation which he uses almost constantly, but isn't natural. When he was a boy he sounded like anyone who grew up in Michigan on the wrong side of the tracks. Sometimes he slips back into that speech pattern when he's surprised. It is this that he settles into as he talks, hoping that the natural accent will throw her off.

He slides over and sets himself on the toilet seat lid next to the shower and reaches out to pull the curtain back. "No peeking," he warns her. The curtain rings jangle across the bar as the plastic sheet slides back, revealing her sitting fully clothed on the floor of her tub. A purple bruise discolors her swollen right eye and her lip is split. She's also cradling her left wrist against her chest as if it hurts, but the long sleeve of her sweater hides her skin, so he can't judge the injury.

"Not hurt, my foot! What happened to you? Did someone break in?" He hadn't seen signs of a break-in from the balcony, but most burglars would have used the front door, which he hadn't checked. If he finds out some criminal _dared_ to target _his_victim, an example would have to be made. Normally he doesn't enjoy doling out punishment, but this time he finds the prospect a pleasure. He wants to hurt someone for this.

"No," she answers. "I let him in. I should have know better, but he swore he'd changed. Once he was inside I could feel the anger rolling off him in waves. I think he'd been drinking. He wanted money like he always does, but I wouldn't give it to him."

"An old boyfriend?" he guesses.

She shakes her head. "No," she answers. In a whisper she adds, "My dad."

"Shit," he swears, his mind reeling. What sort of parent would do this to his own daughter? "Why didn't you call Metro Man?"

"I didn't want him arrested. Metro Man would have hauled him off to jail."

"That's where men who abuse women belong, Roxanne."

"But he's my dad."

He sighs, but doesn't pursue it. She isn't going to be rational about this right now.

He unbuckles the tops of his gloves, peeling them off and folding them neatly on the counter. He scoots over to the edge of the tub where he can reach her arm. "Give me your hand," he instructs her and she obeys. He feels along the bones and pushes the sleeve back to examine her wrist. There are fingermark bruises where she'd been grabbed hard around the forearm. He turns her hand this way and that, flexing the wrist and the fingers. He feels bad when he makes her wince, but it's necessary to learn the extent of her injuries. Satisfied, he tells her, "It's not broken, but it'll feel like it is for a week or so. You'll need to ice it and keep it still as much as you can. Do you have an ace bandage or something in here?"

"Yeah. In the first aid kit under the sink," she answers.

He leaves her side to rummage through her cabinet. When he finds what he needs, he returns to his perch on the side of the tub. He takes her hand again and wraps it tightly, but not too tight, with the elastic bandage. Before he releases her, he gives into an impulse and brings her fingers up to brush briefly against his lips. "Wait here," he tells her, "I'll go get you some ice."

Once she hears the door click closed, she opens her eyes and they land on something black draped over her counter.

—..—..—..—..—

She can hear him clattering around in the freezer and knows he won't be long, but the noise seems like it's coming from far away and she has to take a long moment to stare at the—yes, they _are_ gloves, there's really no way she can deny that. And she only knows one person who wears shoulder-length black gloves with buckles and spikes. She remembers their early texts and has to bite back a watery laugh, hoping he hasn't heard. _What is he doing wrong? _he'd asked. Oh my god. She can't believe this. Her ghost—the person who has been visiting her at night for the past two, almost three _years_—is _Megamind_.

She glances at the bandage on her sprained arm; it's clear he's done this a time or two. Probably because he's used to taking care of himself in prison when Minion isn't around. He'd been very gentle with her back there, and there's the empathy she's been working on developing. She's always had something like that, she'd thought it normal growing up and she'd never really practiced until recently.

Then she hears a thump close by; he's run into something outside the bathroom, and she jumps and closes her eyes again. Unfortunately, he's a genius and she's too tired to put much effort into her act, and he comes to a dead halt as soon as he steps inside.

"Y-you looked?"

She sighs and opens her eyes. "Yeah," she admits quietly. "Yeah, I—hey, wait!" This when his features twist and he stumbles back, reeking so abruptly of confused grief that it nearly knocks her back into the bathtub when she starts to stand. She winces as she pushes herself to her feet; she'd bruised her thigh running into a table earlier, but she pushes herself up anyway and promptly trips over the edge of the tub with a curse.

Miraculously, she doesn't bruise her knees on the tile. Megamind makes one of his unnervingly quick lunges and catches her by the arms, slows her fall, but he jerks his hands back as soon as she's not in any danger of cracking her head open on the sink or toilet.

He's not the only one who can move quickly. She grabs him by the hand, then flinches and hisses in pain—she'd momentarily forgotten her sprained wrist. He pulls his hand away, then mutters something under his breath and plonks himself down on the closed toilet again, pressing the makeshift cold pack under her eye with a sort of angry cooing sound.

Satisfied that he isn't leaving—because if he really is her ghost, then she's got her work cut out for her convincing him she couldn't give less of a crap about normal if she tried—she glances up at him. "Told you."

"Told me what," he says in a low voice. He looks like his usual scowling self again, but she's reading him loud and clear and he's sad, very sad and angry.

"Told you you weren't the only one with a crap childhood."

—..—..—..—..—

He scoffs out a humorless laugh, "Yeah, well. I think I still have you beat. You got one parent beating the crap out of you. I had half a prison happy to abuse me."

"You're right. You're more pitiful than me." She takes over holding the package of frozen peas over her eyes. She grins mischievously up at him from her spot on the tile floor. "You win."

He rolls his eyes at her. "Well, whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right? As much crap as I took, I ought to be stronger than Metro Man," he mutters darkly. He stands up and flips the light switch on so he can see what he's doing better. "No sense sitting here in the dark now that my secret's out." He still feels angry to her. Angry, sad, and resigned. He busies himself at the sink, wetting a washrag and squeezing the excess water out over the basin. Then he kneels in front of her and gently wipes the dried blood off of her lips and chin. He lifts the peas off of her face for a moment to assess her bruise in decent light. "You're going to be off-air for a week," he predicts as her replaces it again.

"I know," she tells him, "It's happened before. I should be able to hide it with make-up once the swelling's down, but not for a few days."

"How often does this happen? Wait..." He thinks back to weeks when she's inexplicably absent from the news broadcast. "Last year, after Thanksgiving and March 14th. Maybe February?"

"No, February I was just playing hooky for a couple days. But, yeah. March and Thanksgiving were bad. In March he had a warrant out for him for a bunch of unpaid fines and Thanksgiving was just... Well, holidays are always bad." She frowns at the memory, "He's not always like that, though. He goes years sometimes when he's just fine." She smiles slightly, remembering good times sitting around joking with her dad like normal people. But she knows they're not really normal. Normal people don't hit each other. "This time he said he owes Psycho Delic money."

Megamind's eyes widen in surprise. Her dad really _is _in trouble if he's dealing with that monster. "Psycho's dangerous. Even I try to stay out of his way if I can," Megamind responds, "On the plus side, he might just take care of the problem for you. Psycho tends to make examples of people who shaft him."

That was the wrong approach. "Oh, God!" she gasps, "I should have just given him the money. I've as good as killed him." Fresh tears stream down her face and everything else suddenly takes a back seat to the fact that her dad's in deep trouble.

He mentally kicks himself. "Hey, none of that. Shhh..." His hands flutter around her, wanting to do something to comfort her, but not sure what. Finally he settles on laying a hand uncertainly on her shoulder. "It's not your fault he got himself in over his head. He should have know better than to mess with Psycho. That guy's just..." Megamind actually shudders. "He's not right up here." He taps his temple.

Not knowing quite what to do to make her feel better about her dad's situation, he settles for helping her injuries feel better. He tosses the wash rag into the sink and rises to his feet. He opens the medicine cabinet and looks through its contents. She has all three major pain relievers and he selects a bottle of Advil and shakes out a pill. She keeps a cup on the bathroom counter and he fills it with water and hands it and the pill to her. "Take this, it'll help with the swelling and the pain."

"Thanks, Doctor," she answers dryly before swallowing the pill obediently.

He smiles tightly, his mind on the problem with her father and Psycho Delic. He leans back against the counter, half-sitting on its edge. He pulls out his phone and dials a number. Roxanne watches warily as he waits while it rings.

"Ollo, Psycho Del-lick." His voice has switched back to what she realizes now, after hearing him talk like a normal person the last few minutes, is his villain's accent. He pronounces Psycho's name with the same contempt she's used to hearing him use when he names Metro Man. "I just heard something interesting that I thought I could help you out with... Does a man named Ronald Richi owe you money?..." Somehow, Roxanne isn't surprised that Megamind knows her father's name without asking. "How much?... Are you certain that's the right amount? I _will_ ask him, and I _won't_ be pleased if your numbers don't match... That sounds better... No, I'm _sure_ it was an honest mistake." He flicks his eyes up at Roxanne and mouths what she thinks is, _Honest my blue ass._ She has to cover her mouth to keep from giggling, which makes her split lip hurt but improves her spirits a bit. "I'll cover him... Yes. I know he doesn't have it. I have an _alternate_ payment plan in mind... I know you hate to give up your toys, but he touched what's mine. I can't let that stand. He owes me damages... Yes, I understand... Oh, that sounds like _fun_." His face scrunches up into a grimace of disgust that belies to his words, but doesn't carry to his voice as he continues with polite regret "No thank you. I have business of my own that will keep me busy tonight. I do appreciate the invitation, though... Right. I'll be in touch. Ciao." He shudders as he clicks the phone closed, "That mutant gives evil a bad name," he tells her.

"He touched what's yours?" She asks, her eyebrow arched over her right eye, "You mean me, don't you? How am I yours?"

"Miss Ritchi," he answers, still talking like Megamind the villain, "You have the privilege of being _my _exclusive victim. Never forget that I'm a supervillain. We don't share our toys. No one in Metrocity is allowed to lay a finger on you or he answers to me. And there aren't many criminals brave enough to risk _that_."

She considers that explanation and is both comforted and disturbed by it. She isn't sure how she feels about being under his protection. Or being described as a toy. She decides to set that aside for a moment in favor of another detail that's bothering her. "What did he invite you to do tonight?"

"He's breaking in some new girls. He wanted to know if I wanted to help." He says it casually, but she gets the impression that he doesn't approve.

"Breaking in?" she presses.

"He's a pimp, among other things. He's..." He hesitates, trying to find the right words, "Training new recruits."

Her eyes open wide in shock, "Do you usually help him with that?"

His reaction is immediate and unequivocal, "Evil gods, no! Even if I were inclined to... _that_, I wouldn't touch Psycho's girls with a sixteen-foot pole. He breaks in every one personally and I _don't _want to share anything he's used. I'd rather swim in a sewage treatment lagoon. It's cleaner."

"Oh."

Not wanting to answer any more questions about his working relationship with the Psycho Delic, he asks, "What's your dad's number?"

She gives it to him and he dials.

—..—..—..—..—

"Whoa, wait!" she exclaims. "What are you—"

He grins at her, waits for the answering machine to pick up. He doesn't expect Ronald to answer, and he isn't disappointed. "Ron! I require your services. One month, rush order, and I won't be paying you—but now that Psycho Delic is no longer your problem, you owe me a favor anyway.

"You have sellers, I want merchandise. CAR-15, one hundred, make sure they're 650B. M1A, .308, two hundred. F.N.P.-90, with halo sights, that's important. One hundred. One month. I will offer fifty—twenty-five to sign, twenty-five to deliver."

He pauses, then, almost as an afterthought, adds, "Oh—and if you ever lay a hand on your daughter again, I won't hesitate to tell Psycho who's been skimming off the top of his Southern Triad operation and let _him_ sort you out." His voice takes on a warning note. "Don't cross me, Ron. I am _not _a man with whom to fuck.

"One month. I'll be in touch."

He hangs up, then aims a sharp smile at Roxanne. "He won't be back for a while, but he's not going to be in trouble any time soon either. He's also not going to want to cross Psycho _and _me. Is that okay?"

She nods slowly. "What was all that...sellers, merchandise? Those numbers?"

His smile slips a notch. "Let's just say I have my fingers in a lot of pies. How do you feel? Any better?"

Roxanne shrugs, still looking up at him curiously. "I feel like I've been hit by a car, but I'm not feeling run-over anymore."

"Good." His smile fades entirely as he stands. "Then I should go. I'm sorry about all this, I really am—I don't expect you to believe that, but—"

She blinks. "Sorry? What on earth are you sorry about? You don't have to leave."

"What?"

"You don't have to leave, Megamind." As weird as it sounds to be saying that… "In fact, I'd like you to stay. At least for tonight. I don't know when Dad's going to check his voicemail."

"So call Metro Man," he says. He'd almost looked hopeful for a moment, but as soon as she'd explained why she wants him to stay his eyes had gone shuttered and dark again.

"I don't _want_ Metro Man staying with me, I want _you_." She scowls. "For one thing, he's busy, and for another...I'm not all that fond of _him_. We have nothing in common. At least with you around I might actually have some fun tonight."

He stares at her, completely floored. She wants him _specifically?_ She's more fond of _him_ than she is of Metro Man? They have things in common? She thinks he might be _fun? _That can't be right. He must be misinterpreting, but...well, there's really only so many ways to misinterpret those remarks.

She looks at him expectantly, but he shows no sign that he's going to answer. "We could...talk? Or play a game! I bet you're _amazing_ at Trivial Pursuit, and I'm not bad at chess although I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you're probably _way _out of my league on that one. Watch a movie. Read a book."

Okay, yes, she _definitely _just complimented his intelligence. Twice.

"Or...I have cooking stuff," she offers, really grasping at straws now because he's still just standing there staring at her. "We could...we could make cookies? Or something?"

He bursts out laughing; he can't help it. That last one was just too ridiculous. "_Make cookies?_ Are you _serious?_ I mean did you _honestly _just suggest that."

"They could be evil cookies!" she protests. "If you want. I think I have some Halloween cookie cutters somewhere, we could make, I dunno...bats?"

—..—..—..—..—

"I can't believe I'm eating evil bat cookies here with you at 2 in the morning," Megamind muses with half a sugar cookie wing still held between his blue fingers, awaiting its imminent demise.

"I can't believe I got you to frost them," Roxanne answers, looking adorable with his cape fastened around her shoulders. He'd taken it off earlier, complaining that she kept her apartment too warm. He prefers things cool and damp. As a compromise she'd turned down the thermostat a bit and stolen his cape for the evening. Both seemed okay with that arrangement.

"Presentation, Miss Ritchi. Undecorated sugar cookies have no style." He finishes off the last of his sinister confection and licks the crumbs off his fingers.

He's surprised to look up and find her watching him raptly from her side of the couch as he cleans his fingers. "What?" he asks.

"Why is it that your skin's blue but the inside of your mouth is pink?" she asks. It's the sort of question that would normally draw a scowl and a sarcastic retort. He doesn't like being reminded of what a freak he is by this planet's standards. But it feels different with Roxanne asking. Especially with her looking at him like that. He thinks that she's genuinely curious about him and doesn't mean any offense. She's also very obviously sleepy, which seems to lead to unusual questions, he's noticed.

"The blue is just a skin pigment. The melanin in human skin comes in various shades of brown. Mine's blue," he shrugs, "Inside, like my mouth, I'm the same color as you because my blood's the same color."

"Oh! I should have known that. I've seen you bleed before. That makes sense." She draws her brows together and he knows she has another question.

He can't help smiling as he waits for it. She's been asking him questions all night, like the natural reporter she is. Once she'd convinced him that anything he told her in private will stay private, he didn't mind answering more-or-less anything she wanted to know.

"So, if you go out in the sun very much, do you get darker blue?"

He laughs outright. He'd never had anyone ask him that one before. "Yes, actually I do. I can even get a sunburn. It's not much of an issue, though, since I spend most of my time indoors."

She tries to unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn.

"It's past your bedtime," he tells her gently, "You're usually asleep around eleven. You should go to bed."

"I don't want to. You'll just leave as soon as I fall asleep and I don't want you to go."

"You can't stay up all night"

"Why not? You're staying up."

"Yes, but I'm a strange, extraterrestrial life form with inhuman diurnal cycles. I don't need to sleep now."

"I should never have made you that second pot of coffee."

He smiles, but doesn't respond verbally. It's late and the silence stretching between them is comfortable and companionable. Roxanne moves down to his end of the couch and leans up against his side. His body immediately stiffens and he grunts uncomfortably.

"What?" she asks.

"Too many spikes," he tells her.

She sits back up and removes the cape, rearranging it across her lap instead and tries again. "Better?" she asks.

In answer, he wraps his arm around her torso, holding her securely in place against his side. She relaxes into him and he soon realizes that she's fallen fast asleep.

Morning finds her alone on the couch, but there's a note sitting on her coffee table written in his now-familiar handwriting. She picks it up and reads his message.

"I went to get donuts. I'll be back soon."

She marvels at how normal that sounds.


	4. Beginnings

In which Dal realizes that she ended up recycling a few lines from another of her stories. Whoops. (Actually, I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often than it does…)

Starts with Karen!

**Chapter 4: Beginnings**

The clock tells her that, thanks to her late night, she's already half an hour late for work. Her boss isn't happy when she calls in to tell him that she won't be in for at least 3 or 4 days. Even her celebrity status doesn't insulate her from expectations of punctuality and professional conduct. She's already notoriously unreliable due to unscheduled Supervillain activity and flaking out for unspecified personal reasons on top of that won't help her career any.

Luckily, the old man's protective streak comes out strong when she breaks down and admits that her father had come to town for a friendly weekend visit that ended in him beating the crap out of her last night. After that revelation, her boss trips all over himself making certain that she's really all right. "I'm fine, but I've got a real shiner. My eye won't even open halfway right now. I can't go on-air like this." In the end they decide that she'll take a personal day today and work from home for the rest of the week. He warns her to be ready for a glamourless week of fact-checking, phone interviews, and copy writing: all the grunt work usually assigned to the lesser reporters and interns. It irks her that Tricia will get her spot on camera while she's gone, but it can't be helped. She wonders what the office rumor mill will make of her mysterious absence due to _personal reasons_.

"Are you safe now?" her boss asks, "Is your dad gonna come back and beat on you some more?"

"No. A friend of mine took care of it. Dad won't bother me again."

"This friend wouldn't happen to be a certain caped super would he?" he asks knowingly. She can almost see Phil's smug face. To him anything that binds her closer to Metro Man can't do anything but help the station's ratings.

She wonders if he'd even believe her if she told him that this time it wasn't Metro Man who'd made her safe. Well, Megamind does count as a caped super, even if he's not the one Phil meant. "You caught me."

He laughs good-naturedly, pleased to have, apparently, guessed correctly.

They say their goodbyes and, as she hangs up the phone, the knob on her front door turns and the door creaks open.

—..—..—..—..—

It only opens a little before it stops for a second, and then a gloved hand pushes it most of the way open. Megamind hovers in the hallway, uncertain.

She has to try not to laugh. "You can come back in, you know. At this point, you're officially visiting."

He steps inside and quickly closes the door behind him again. "I wasn't sure. I haven't…I haven't really done this before, the whole sleeping over in someone else's home? Especially sleeping over with someone you kidnap on a regular basis."

"What about sleeping over at a friend's house?" she asks. "You've never done that?"

He sends her a Look as he sets the box of doughnuts down on the coffee table. "Please," he says dryly, "you've met me. How many 'friends' do you think I have?"

She flips open the lid and blinks. "Wow. Do you have varied tastes, or what?"

He colors a little. "I…well, I wasn't sure what kinds you liked. So I just grabbed. You know. All of them?"

She takes a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles on it and grins at him. "Mm. Mkay, see, you're funny, you're considerate, you know all kinds of fun facts so there's really no shortage of interesting conversations to have with you..." She takes a bite and continues talking with her mouth full, which amuses Megamind to no end. "'Nd sure, you're immodest, but I'm starting to think that's mostly an act. Honestly, I'm surprised you don't have more friends. You're _fun_."

He shrugs, trying not to smile at the compliments and failing terrifically. "I—but I'm not—people tend not to like me very much."

"Well _that's _not surprising," she says, much to his confusion. "You're deliberately off-putting in public. You put on this whole song and dance about how you're evil and bad and going to hurt people if they cross you."

"But I _am _evil and bad and going to hurt people if they cross me," he argues, and she remembers the voicemail he'd left on her father's phone and his conversation with the walking hallucinogen. "There are things you don't know about me. Bad things."

"Doesn't mean you're a bad _person_." She finishes her doughnut and wipes her hands on a napkin, then starts absently tearing the napkin into ribbons. "I mean. You. We texted for, what, two weeks? And you came flying when I needed you. You fixed things so Psycho wouldn't kill my dad, and you made pretty sure Dad wouldn't hurt me again. Then you stayed the night when I asked you to. You let me sleep in your _lap_. You didn't _have_ to do any of those things," she points out. _Rrrrrrrip_. "In fact, you probably shouldn't have done them at all. They're not very good for your image. What if I told someone?"

He recoils. "You wouldn't," he says, but he doesn't sound sure. "A-and even if you did they wouldn't believe you."

"Of course I wouldn't," she agrees. She's still staring down at the napkin; she hadn't seen how discomfited her comment had made him. "But you trusted me. I know I said I wouldn't look at you, but you were still taking a huge risk, coming here. I am a reporter, after all, and if I played my cards right, this story isn't all that unbelievable. How could you possibly know you could trust me?"

He sighs and runs his tongue across the fronts of his teeth, cleaning them as best he can; he's already polished off two doughnuts and is reaching for a third. "I don't know the answer to that one," he admits, unwilling to tell her that he hadn't really thought at all. He'd just come racing over the second she'd needed him. "Call it a hunch."

"But it doesn't make _sense!_" she exclaims.

_Are we...wait..._His eyes blink wide. This is it. This is what he'd wanted, wasn't it, all those nights on the outside looking in? This is The Talk, this is where they talk about normal people things and he tells her how he feels and—maybe—she listens.

He puts the third doughnut back in the box.

Roxanne pulls up short, looking at his face. He'd looked almost shocked for a moment there, and then intensely thoughtful as his focus had narrowed inward. "What is it?" she asks quietly.

He presses his lips together, shuts his eyes, frowning the way he had last night when she'd told him she looked at his gloves. Worried, she puts her hand over his, but he pulls it away and folds his hands in his lap. "I..." He looks away, his gaze flicking around the room as if searching for something. Then his shoulders slump and he blinks a few times and bites his lip and opens his mouth and hesitates again before blurting out, "Oh, good _gravity_, there is _no _con-sayee-vable way for me to phrase this without sounding like a total stalker!"

Ringing silence follows this until he finally breaks it, speaking more quietly this time, almost as if he's talking to himself. "I suppose that's because I...I _have_ been watching you. For years. A-and if you ask me to stop, I will!" he adds quickly, almost tripping over the words in his haste to get them out. He looks urgently at Roxanne, half-begging her to believe him. "I swear, if you want me to leave and never come back, I won't ever come anywhere near you again and I won't watch you or follow you or _anything_. I _swear_. I give you my word."

"The word of a supervillain," she murmurs. "How much is that worth? I wonder."

"It's worth quite a lot," he replies in a low voice, "if you asked any of my underworld contacts, you'd know that."

She doesn't respond to that vocally, just nods and waits for him to continue. He rubs a shaking hand over his scalp before dropping it back into his lap. "I...the thing is, Miss Ritchi. Roxanne. I've...sort of developed feelings for you." He glances over at her just in time to see her eyes go very, very wide—and then very, very narrow. It makes his stomach turn, but he's gone this far and he might as well go all the way. "This is a lot to drop on your head, I know. That the person you've been corresponding with is Megamind. That he's been watching you without your knowledge or consent for nearly three years. And that he has..._feelings_ for you. That's wildly creepy, I know." _Normal people don't do things like that_, he doesn't say, because "normal" isn't a fair card to play at this point. For this, he wants to be judged by human standards, by _her _standards.

Roxanne, for her part, is thinking hard.

Yes, it's creepy—or is it that she knows it _should_ be creepy? She isn't sure. She doesn't really feel creeped out, and she knows that's a little strange. But she also knows _he's _a little strange. Is he imbalanced? Maybe, but she doesn't think that necessarily makes him threatening. From what she's been able to gather from their correspondence, all their long conversations last night, and the emotional residue he'd left on her balcony, he's never believed himself worthy of companionship. He'd admitted to being constantly surprised at her texts, at the notes she'd left for him. Of course he wouldn't just knock on her door and introduce himself; even if he had that kind of confidence, the period during which that would have been acceptable is long gone: buried under years of kidnappings and evil banter. But maybe if he had thought he had a chance, things would have played out differently.

And if she's being honest with herself, she'll admit that she's developed feelings for him, too. Being in contact multiple times a day got him into her head, especially when he can make her laugh with a two-word response, and even before that, she'd always wondered about her "ghost."

—..—..—..—..—

This isn't a situation to be solved by thinking, she decides. Lord knows his head's big enough. If there were a logical solution, he'd have come up with it a long time ago. What he's talking about are emotions. She's good with emotions, but she wants to be sure, not just read what's at the surface right now. "Can I touch your face," she asks him abruptly.

"Why?" he asks warily. That seems like an out-of-the-blue request.

"I want to try something, and I think it'll work better skin-to-skin." Actually, she doesn't know because she's never tried it, but something instinctual tells her this is the way.

He looks at her oddly.

"You're not the only weird one here, Megamind. I'm kind of psychic, remember?" She smiles reassuringly. _Please trust me,_her eyes seem to beg.

He blinks. "You want to read my mind?" Didn't he just tell her that there were bad things about him that she didn't know?

"Are you afraid of what I'll see?" She teases.

He swallows and answers seriously, "Yes." This is a bad idea.

"I'm not." She holds her hands up, letting him decide whether to allow it. He hesitates only a second before leaning forward, signaling his acceptance. She meets him halfway, one hand splayed across either side of his face. She leans forward to rest her small human forehead against his massive blue one. Closing her eyes, she opens herself to him and reels as she falls into his mind.

—..—..—..—..—

Maybe two months ago nothing would have happened, but she's been practicing at opening herself to people at will and she very seriously doubts that he's ever practiced keeping someone out.

So the jangling sea of concepts comes as no surprise to her. She's a little surprised that she can't pick out thoughts, but maybe that's not so surprising—thoughts aren't coherent little strings of words, after all; they're flickers of ideas, emotions, images that come together and form meaning.

Mostly she registers confusion, but she'd expected that. She decides to try an experiment, try to open some kind of communication.

_Megamind?_, she tries, but nothing happens. And of course it wouldn't. It's just a word, not a mental signature. She scowls without opening her eyes and focuses on the way he smells, the way his skin is cool in her hands and his heart is hammering in her ears and the familiar way he speaks, the way he looks at her—the way his slow smile goes. Everything that sets him apart. Everything that makes him

_Megamind_

He yells and flings himself away from her, his green eyes huge and panicked, and because they're on the couch and he's flying backwards he ends up catapulting himself over the arm of the sofa and landing with a thud on the floor.

"Sorry!" she exclaims, scrambling after him so quickly it makes her head spin. "Sorry, sorry! I didn't think that would actually work."

"You were in my _head_," he yelps, jumping to his feet and clutching his temples. She'd come flaring in with a song like light and color, calling his name like church bells at sunrise, all glory and newness and blinding potential. Fuck, _that's_ how she sees him? Not for much longer, if he lets her spend much more time in there. "You. You were _in my head_."

"Sorry," she says again, and reaches for him. "Sorry! Okay, I won't do that again. Let me try again?"

Incredibly, he comes back and lets her get back in position. This time she pushes past the confusion, stumbles on something that tastes like resignation, a sort of stay-the-course feeling. Past _that_…

Images. He's thinking hard about her, which makes her job incredibly easy—flashes of past kidnappings, experiences, things she'd said or done, some of which he associates with what she assumes are other memories from further back. And she discovers that she'd been wrong before.

He isn't sad. He's _angry_. Deep inside there is a banked fire of confusion and seething indignant rage. It's a general sense of "but _why?_" so strong that it almost makes her break the link. Little blinks of individual memories swirl behind her eyes—taunts from children, punishments he hadn't entirely deserved or should have shared with someone else, explanations he'd never been allowed to give, a thousand tiny intimations that he simply _is not good enough_. And that he never will be.

What's really awful is that, at some point, he started thinking maybe that was true. That's where the wash of grief and melancholy comes from; he comes to her balcony when he's feeling particularly powerless, like he has no ability to change the way he's perceived or perceives the world. He'd been thrown down and kicked until he had finally decided to just not bother getting up again—she sees back-alley transactions, quiet dealings with shady characters, drugs and guns and clever negotiations on a scale that she really hadn't expected from him. But he's still angry and he still tries from time to time—like he is now—because at the core of his being, somewhere, somehow, he knows that's not right.

What surprises her the most, though, is how terribly everything _hurts_.

She rocks backwards, horrified, staring at him. How can one person feel all that and not explode?

"You see," he says. "At least, I assume you—" He breaks off when she jolts forward and wraps her arms around him, clutching him against her.

—..—..—..—..—

She climbs right in his lap, unconcerned about anything but getting as close to him as she possibly can. She clutches him tight enough to make her wounded wrist throb, because what else can she possibly do? She'd seen it in his eyes. That flinch. The way he'd braced himself for her rejection. The excuse he'd begun to voice, to make it okay for her to push him away. He'd expected her to hurt him all along because that's what everyone always does eventually. How many times had he been pushed away? Pushed down? Pushed back?

Tears stream down her face and she sniffs against his neck. He'd said he wasn't okay. He was dealing with it, but he'd never been okay. How _could _he be okay when the problem wasn't him? It was this planet! These people. Her people. Humans who were so quick to demonize anyone who was different from them. People too stupid to see what was right in front of their faces. Metro City had taken this genuine supergenius, the only one of his kind on the planet, and torn him down until the highest position he thought he could aspire to was that of a supervillain.

And yet, he hadn't broken.

This is a man who can make Psycho Delic give up a plaything. He can walk out of prison on a whim. He regularly threatens a superhero and laughs at the consequences. He knows everything that happens in the underworld and is paid a cut of most of it. This reckless, dangerous, deviously intelligent man controls Metro City not because he has any real desire to, but because it's the task he was given and he can hardly help but excel at anything he does. Even when it hurts. He'll do what is necessary. Anything short of murder. That's one line he's never crossed. One line he won't.

She's in awe of his strength. "You're stronger than Metro Man," she whispers.

"Clearly, I'm not," he tells her dryly, but with a hint of humor humming in the air around him. "I can't even lift a car. I think being in my head has scrambled your brain."

She loosens her hold on him and sits back so she can look him in the eye. "Not that kind of strength, smartass," she scolds him with a watery smile. She moves her injured hand to rest over his heart and taps her fingers lightly on his chest, "In here. You're the strongest person I know."

He doesn't know what to say to that obvious compliment. He thinks to deny it or deflect it with humor. But in the end he just smiles and accepts it. It feels good, even if he doesn't believe it's true. He raises his gloved hand to her face to wipe away her tears with his thumb, being especially gentle around her bruised eye. "I don't understand why you haven't chased me off yet. Didn't you see what I am? What I've done?"

"I saw."

"How much?"

"Enough to understand why Psycho Delic does what you tell him," she answers somberly with a little sympathetic frown.

His face pales a bit and he swallows thickly. That had not been a pleasant night. Necessary to get the drug lord's fealty. But not pleasant. Not something he had wanted her to see.

"You can be one scary guy," she observes quietly.

"I can be. But you're not scared." It's not a question. She's sitting on his lap with an arm around his neck. She isn't afraid of him at all.

"No," she agrees.

That bothers him. How could she not be frightened, knowing what he's capable of? It was one of the most sickening things he'd ever had to do. She should be disgusted by him. Why isn't she? Unless... is she into that sort of thing? "You like scary men?" he asks. He'd never gotten that impression from her, but...

She laughs at his confusion. It's hard for her to take something the wrong way when she's sitting so close that she's surrounded by his emotions. "Not particularly. But I like you."

"You do?"

"Yes."

"But how could you, knowing that I—"

"—It was necessary," she interrupts, "And I know you didn't enjoy it." She moves her hand up to his face, tracing along the dark strip of hair on his chin. "You really have a shitty job, you know that?"

"I'm aware," he answers darkly.

—..—..—..—..—

She offers him a thin smile. "You do it so _well_. I'm kind of amazed."

"I'm not," he says. "I'm wildly confused. You really should be…anywhere but where you are right now, honestly."

Roxanne actually _laughs_. "Why? Because what you do is so awful that even you are disgusted with yourself?" He blinks, injured, but she shakes her head. "Megamind. Your job doesn't define you. What you do and who you are...those are two vastly different things. You can do awful things and still be a good person."

He tilts his head. "And you _really _aren't scared."

"I'm really not. Just because you _can _hurt me doesn't mean you will," she says softly, resting her head against his.

Which is right about when she realizes that she's sitting in his lap, and that could be weird considering this is the first time they've really spent much time together outside of a kidnapping. She considers pulling back. She probably should. But dammit, she doesn't want to let go of him yet! She can't shake the feeling that this is right, this is a good place for them to be—with him at her side, in her arms.

Well, she'll ask him. "Is this weird?"

He blinks again, this time in bewilderment. "Wh-what? Is what weird?"

"This. Me sitting on you?"

He goes almost imperceptibly stiff beneath her. "Well. I suppose you could move, if you wanted to."

Incredibly, she shakes her head again. "I want to stay right where I am, but I don't know if I'm sending you the wrong signals."

He smiles thinly. "And what signals would those be, Miss Ritchi?"

"The signal that I'm going to do something wildly inappropriate. Like, for example, kiss you."

Up goes an eyebrow. "Do I take this to mean you're _not _going to kiss me?" he says, half-joking.

"No!" she exclaims. "It—it's too soon." Then she pauses. "Although…well, now I'm thinking about it…" She wrinkles her nose at him, her eyes dancing. "Can I?"

_Is she serious? _"I don't know," he says unevenly, and swallows. "Can you?"

"Smartass," she whispers again, and tilts her head forward, asking.

_Well this is an interesting development_, he thinks dizzily. This really was not how he expected their first face-to-face encounter to go. He'd expected yelling—swearing at the very least. Not this, not her sitting with her arms around his shoulders and offering to kiss him. Especially not after she looked in his mind the way she had. Speaking of which, when in the hell had she learned to—

"Do you always get distracted this easily?" she murmurs, and he jumps and realizes she'd been waiting for an answer. She withdraws a little, and he's honestly a little bit relieved…but mostly disappointed. "Listen, Megamind. I don't know where things between us are going to go after this. I don't think I'd be able to take getting kidnapped by you again, not knowing…what I know."

His blood runs cold. This is it. "I don't know wh-where we're going, either," he manages to say with numb lips.

She frowns a little and takes him by the chin again, pulls his head down so she can brush their foreheads together. "Whoa, there, take it easy," she chides him gently. "What I was going to say was, 'and I was hoping maybe I could go there with you.'" She peers hopefully up at him. "I was hoping maybe _we_ could go there together. And Minion too, of course. If you wanted."

—..—..—..—..—

"So, what you're saying is that you want to... date me?" He frowns then adds, "And possibly Minion?"

She can't help laughing at that. "No, not Minion! That would be..." She shakes her head, not voicing what that would be. "But, yeah. I want to date you. At least, I want to try. I only mentioned Minion because I know how close you two are. I meant that I don't want to take you away from him or try to hide what we're doing."

"Too late to hide. I already called him and bragged while I was getting donuts," he admits without shame or hesitation. The two aliens are closer than brothers and they have few secrets from one another. Megamind knew that the henchfish would be worried when his master didn't return to Evil Lair last night. He hadn't been considerate enough to call in time to keep the ichthyoid from worrying the night through, but once he'd left Roxanne's apartment in the morning, it had occurred to him to check in. The two are close, but Megamind is often self-absorbed. He'd had his mind too occupied with the pretty reporter sleeping in his lap to spare a thought for Minion before morning. If Minion was bothered by his master's oversight, Megamind hadn't noticed.

"What did he say when you told him you spent the night with me?"

"He asked me if I'd lost my mind. I'm not sure that I haven't. But it's a nice sort of insanity." The villain's eyes drop to her mouth and he bites his lower lip. She wants to be his girlfriend. It's as if he'd died and gone to evil heaven. Next to that, Minion's disapproval is inconsequential.

The sharp tang of desire swirls through the air, bringing her attention to the direction of his gaze. Her heart speeds up and she knows he wants to kiss her. Now. He isn't thinking about Minion or being a Supervillain or anything else. He just wants her lips on his.

And yet he hesitates. Nervousness buzzes through the air. The jangle of uncertainty. Good lord, is he _still _not sure that she wants this? She decides to put him out of his misery and closes the distance herself.

Their lips meet gently and he sighs in relief at the contact. She takes the lead, showing him how she likes it. When she parts her lips, she's surprised to feel him eagerly take the invitation to lick his tongue into her mouth. He's a fast learner, she thinks with approval. Or else he's not as inexperienced as her dip into his mind had shown. He tastes faintly of sugar glaze and he's cooler than she is. It's like kissing someone whose just sipped an iced drink. She thinks his tongue might be more flexible than hers because he seems able to curl it around hers in a way that she can't remember experiencing before. She fights a naughty little thought that suggests other things that tongue might be good for. It's far, far too soon to be thinking along those lines. She's glad that, between the two of them, she's the one whose the psychic. She'd rather him not know, just yet, exactly how much she wants him.

(Meanwhile, back at Evil Lair, Minion stomps angrily about. "Stays out the entire night, me here worried sick and he never thinks to check in. Brain that size and it never occurs to him to call. He could be bleeding in a ditch somewhere and I'd never know. How can I take care of him if he sneaks off in the night? Sneaks off to Miss Ritchi's," he hisses, his dorsal ridges glowing with irritation. "Keeping her company indeed! Does he think I hatched yesterday? Is he insane? He's the _bad guy_." The normally cheerful piscean continues to mutter to himself as he starts on his daily chores. The brainbots give him a wide birth, not wanting to risk the fierce little fish's anger.)


	5. Considerations

Bluh, sorry I took so long putting this up! I'm back at school now and it took a few days to get settled in, and packing and unpacking and…behold my stupid excuses! Here it is. ^^ This one starts with Karen!

We own nothingggggg.

**Chapter 5: Considerations**

He's kissing Roxanne. HE is KISSING his GIRLFRIEND Roxanne! Okay, maybe a _little_ premature to call her that. But, then again, she _is_kissing him. He wants to crow triumphantly, but that would require removing his mouth from hers, something he is loathe to do. He settles for a happy little moan that causes her to squirm delightfully against his chest and thrust her hot, teasing tongue into his mouth. Her tongue in his mouth, and his in hers. It should be weird, but it's not. It's perfect. He reaches up to clutch his gloved fingers in the soft strands of her hair, holding her in place. She's on top of him, but he's in control. She lets him have control. Lets him explore her sweet mouth with his lips, his tongue, his teeth.

He memorizes every reaction, categorizing them for future reference. How she gasps when he nips at her lips. The little mewling sound when he flicks his tongue against the roof of her mouth. How she moans when he sucks on her bottom lip. The way she melts in his arms when he fists his hand in her hair.

His breath is coming in ragged pants, his inhuman heart races. Feelings, impulses race through his body. Things he wants to do with her. Things he's sure she isn't ready for. Things he's beginning to crave. Things he could take.

He forces himself to stop. Releasing her mouth, he holds himself perfectly still as he focuses on calming his rapid breathing and his racing heart. Regaining control.

"Wow," she says breathlessly, "You don't do things by halves, do you?" He glances up to meet smiling blue eyes that look as hungry as he feels. The Temptress.

—..—..—..—..—

He slumps a little and lets his forehead rest against hers, forcing himself to stop looking at her. Eye contact is probably not what he needs right now, considering what it can do. "I-I really don't," he agrees shakily, smoothing her rumpled hair. She'll let him take control of her, yes, though that probably depends on just how far she's willing to go at this point—he just has to remain in control of himself. The last thing he wants to do is scare her off. "It's, um, it's sort of a thing. A principle? Of mine. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to _do_it."

"That explains a lot," she says lightly. "So. What exactly do you want to _do?_"

"Well, currently you're tempting me towards some things I want to do a lot but maybe we should avoid," he mumbles.

She raises her eyebrows. "Am I moving too fast?"

"I don't know if _you_ are," he says. "I'm just worried _I _am."

She shrugs. "How long have we known each other?"

"Years," he admits. "But, I mean, it's not like we _know _each other. At this point, you know significantly more about me than I do about you, and I'm not really sure how to fix that. And I'm not really sure what you're after, here."

It's so odd. While they'd been kissing she had sensed almost zero hesitation on his part, but now he's broadcasting all sorts of jittery nervousness. "Well, considering my original interest was in an emotional signature, I think we can safely assume I'm after more than just your body. Although," she adds when he looks sharply up at her, "I should probably tell you that there's not a whole lot you _could_ do with me right now, body-wise, that I haven't considered at _least _once."

He grins and sticks his finger unceremoniously in her ear.

She chuckles. "I hadn't considered that."

"I figured," he replies smugly, but then his crackling humor fades somewhat as he moves to trace his fingertip around the shell of her ear. "I just don't know why you're doing this," he finally tells her.

_Ah. Well, that's easily explained._ "I've _wanted_ to do this for a while because frankly, you've always fascinated me. Both as my supervillain _and_ my ghost. And I'm actually _doing_ it because you let me look in your head—twice—and I saw enough to know that you have no ulterior motives." Her mouth twists to the side and she leans into his hand. "If you're worried I'm doing this out of pity, stop. You'd have to be pitiful in order for me to do that, and you're anything but." She rests one hand high on his chest, at the base of his throat, and decides to say it as plainly as she possibly can. "I'm doing this because I like you and because you're fun to hang out with and I want to do more of that in various contexts. It's the exact same reason I've ever dated anyone, Megamind."

—..—..—..—..—

"Okay, so..." He takes a deep breath and puffs his cheeks as he exhales. "We're dating. Are we dating?"

She smiles and traces her finger along the _M_ clasp securing his cape around his shoulders. "_I _think we are," she confirms.

He smiles and nods to himself as much as to her, "Okay, we're dating. What exactly does that entail?"

She shrugs, "Whatever we want it to. There aren't really any rules. I mean, there are _customs_. But, I've never been big on tradition for tradition's sake. I just... I want us to spend time together. What we do doesn't really matter. Though... I'd prefer nothing illegal."

"So, no romantic walks in the park to mug people? No midnight shopping after the stores have closed? No cruising down main street in a stolen car?" With each question, the mock-devastated look on his face deepens, until finally she breaks down into silent giggles. "How about you tag along with me when I run errands? You can hold my de-gun while I do my banking."

"No," she laughs, "Nothing illegal!" She swats him playfully on the shoulder. "Ow!" she yelps, grabbing her wrist. She'd forgotten it was hurt.

"Ah-ah, Miss Ritchi," he scolds cheerfully, "If you abuse me, I might decide that this isn't a healthy relationship and go home."

The only proper response to that, of course, is to grab a couch pillow and bop him over the giant blue head. Fortunately for him there is no shortage of pillows to choose from for retaliation. The enjoyable tussle that ensues leaves them both laughing and somewhat out of breath on the floor with Megamind straddling Roxanne's waist and pinning her arms to the floor with particular care for her injured wrist.

—..—..—..—..—

God, this is _so weird!_ He'd _never_ thought anything like this would happen. Not ever. Certainly not with her. Not with her pinned beneath him, laughing up at him with dancing eyes. Not with her startling him by sitting up suddenly and catching his mouth with hers, smiling against his lips as he follows her back down. He lets go of her captive hands so he can take off his gloves and slide his forearm under her head and tangle his bare fingers in her hair. He's not really planning on taking anything else off, but he'd needed to touch, and oh _yes_ it really _is _as soft as it looks.

Not with her agreeing to date him—agree? She'd said she _wanted _to!—and certainly not with her kissing him. Definitely not with tongues. And happy little noises.

Wow. Just wow. This is all just a whole lot of wow.

He'd startled Roxanne by letting go of her wrists, then startled her again when he'd slipped an arm under her head like a pillow. The way he holds her is very...surprising. He ends up cupping her cheek, kind of, with his thumb against her temple and his restless fingertips sifting through her hair. And he's on top of her, yes, but he isn't just lying there and crushing her into the hard floor; he's supporting his own weight on his elbows and knees. He's definitely thinking about all this. Not just losing himself in the moment.

She's on her back on the floor of her apartment, kissing the daylights out of a nationally-recognized supervillain, and he's actually turned out to be a very considerate and kind individual. This is so surreal, she thinks.

"This is surreal," Megamind murmurs, breaking the kiss, and she raises her eyebrows again.

"You a mind-reader? Because I was _just _thinking that."

Chuckling, he shakes his head and closes his eyes. "No. I think this situation is just inherently surreal, you know? You and me. Kissing."

"On my floor," she continues for him.

"After a pillow fight."

"A lot."

He lets out an undignified snort. "A lot. Heh. Jeez, an honest-to-gravity pillow fight, I _never _thought I'd see the day..."

"How the mighty have fallen," she smiles. She lifts a hand to his face, strokes her thumb down his goatee, brushes her fingers across his cheek. His skin is _soft_. And she's never seen anyone with so few marks on his skin—no freckles, no old scars, no _nothing_. Then she notices something else. "You always close your eyes when I look at you," she says. "Why?"

"Prolonged eye contact triggers the release of certain endorphins in both our brains," he murmurs without opening his eyes. "And I don't want to cloud our judgment."

"Cloud our..." She frowns a little. "What?"

"I'm serious," he insists. "It creates a real, actual connection. Even just between humans. You don't believe me, try it sometime with a friend. Even a stranger. Two minutes, no talking, don't break eye contact. I guarantee you'll feel something."

She considers this. "And you don't want to do that?"

—..—..—..—..—

"I don't want to lose perspective. I look into your eyes and I feel like I'm floating. It makes me feel like the world is perfect and rosy just because you're here. But I know it isn't. That's just the effects of oxytocin and other chemicals my brain is pumping into my system right now. Tricking me. I want to... I need to keep control of my emotions. I can't let this between us cloud my thinking."

"You're afraid," she realizes.

"I am not," he denies.

She isn't fooled. "You're _terrified _that you'll fall in love with me and I'll break your heart."

He starts to lift himself off of her, looking away as he speaks. "Of course not—"

"—Stop." He does, pausing in mid-move, still looking away. "I can tell when you lie, whether you look me in the eye or not," she explains, "Psychic, remember?"

He sighs and relaxes back over her where he was before. He asks ruefully, "Are you going to pull that on me every time we disagree over something?"

"Only if you think you can lie to me to win," she answers, then she softens her words saying, "Hey, you get a giant, super intelligent brain, it's only fair I get a trick or two of my own. Evens things up a bit." She raises up on her elbows to peck him on the cheek to show him there are no hard feelings.

He smiles both to acknowledge her point and because he likes it when she kisses him.

Before he has a chance to speak, she scolds him, "And don't change the subject and think I won't notice." Back to the point, she continues, "You're afraid that I'll hurt you—which is completely understandable, by the way—I could. Honestly, odds are I will. We both know this is a long shot. But if you try to keep me at arms length so that we won't connect too much... Well, then I can guarantee that it won't work. And I don't know about you, but I _want _this to work.

"I want to _do_ this, Megamind. Didn't you just say that's a thing with you? You don't do things by halves. Neither do I. Let's _do _this."

He sighs. "It isn't just that I'm afraid of being hurt. I'm not looking forward to it, but honestly, I can deal with pain. Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

"Did you just quote The Princess Bride? I think I love you, now."

Despite his best intentions, he flicks her eyes down to meet hers and she grins in triumph, "Now whose changing the subject?"

"Sorry," she says innocently, "Please continue."

—..—..—..—..—

"I just don't want to fall in love with you _deliberately_," he says. "That...artificially-induced chemical reactions in the brain are not the _point _of love, at least not as far as I can tell. That's not how it's supposed to go—"

"Oh, I agree. And that's really not what I was suggesting," she says, and he stumbles again and blinks down at her.

"What?"

"Two minutes of unbroken eye contact was _your_ idea, not mine," she reminds him. "I just don't want you to look away every time I...there you go again! _Stop _that!"

For some reason, she sounds genuinely troubled. "Look, I can't just—"

"It's a matter of trust," she says shortly. "If you can't look me in the eye, then...then how do I know I can trust you? You have to give trust to get it, Megamind, and avoiding eye contact just looks shady." When he opens his mouth, she shakes her head and bulls forward, "I'm not suggesting we _stare_ at each other. I just want us to be able to look at each other. And I _know_ you don't trust me and I _know_ it's going to take time for that to happen, but I want you to know that _I_ trust _you_."

Suddenly she pauses. "Okay, no, wait, hold on. That's not what this is, is it? Not entirely, anyway."

He makes a face. "Can you stop that? I know you can control it."

She scowls at him. "You're not being open with me, why should I stop trying to read you?"

"Because I should be _allowed_ to not be completely open with you!" he exclaims. "I don't expect you to tell me every little nuance of _your_ psyche. Besides, I've already opened myself to your scrutiny—_twice_—and I'd like to maybe not have _all _of my secrets out on display for you. Is that so awful?" He frowns, agitated, and sits up. "Looking at you while you're looking at me makes me uncomfortable."

She blinks, then slowly forces herself to close off whatever part of her mind it is that controls the empathy/psychic whatevers. He makes a good point. "Uncomfortable," she repeats, baffled. "Why on earth..."

"Because it means you're looking at me. It's nothing against _you_," he hastens to add, scowling at the floor. "It's just that...people looking at me rarely works out in my favor. I tend to react badly to it, and I don't want to end up snapping at you just for looking at you."

Oh. _Ohhh_. Okay, that...that actually does make some sense. He's spent his life in the shadows, hiding from people—the face he shows to the city isn't even his real one, just a mask he's learned to hide behind. She's hidden behind her share of masks, she knows what that's like, and she knows he's saying he knows that when she looks at him, she isn't seeing the mask; she's seeing _him_. And that makes him nervous.

"Hey," she says. "Hey. Okay. Here, hang on, you don't have to look, just let me..."

She sits up and takes his face in her hands again, rests her forehead against his. She doesn't push into his mind, doesn't call out the way she had earlier; this is a purely physical gesture. "Megamind. If you can't look at me, then listen. You are. _Seriously_. Gorgeous. Mind _and _personality _and_ body. It's not even just your face; I've never seen anything _move_ the way you do. So I'm going to say this now, so we're clear—you don't have to look at me if you don't want to, but if you expect me to stop looking at my _boyfriend_," his eyes fly open and he jerks back in reflexive surprise, as she had known he would, "you shouldn't. Because I don't think I'm capable of that." Then she smiles softly at him, tilting her head as she rubs her thumbs across his cheeks. "There you are," she murmurs.

—..—..—..—..—

"Also, I should apologize about the psychic thing. It's still really new and I'm trying to figure out how it works. I guess I hadn't thought much about boundaries yet. You're right, you're entitled to your privacy. I didn't really mean to ah..." her face colors in a blush and she pulls her hand away from his face, "Snoop quite as much as I did."

"Well, you did ask first," he acknowledges, letting her off the hook. "I should have know better than to let a nosy reporter into my head. Of course you'd learn all my secrets."

She huffs a laugh at the reminder of their former professional relationship, "I seriously doubt I found _all_ your secrets. I wasn't in there that long. I actually didn't even mean to read your _thoughts_ at all. I didn't know I _could_ read thoughts. I'd only ever to picked up emotions before. I'm still kind of jazzed about that, to be honest. I'm kind of itching to see what else I can do." Her grin is just a bit manic as she thinks about the potential of her new talent. Does being psychic count as a super power? "I was really just trying for a clearer emotional read. You were swirling with so many different feelings at the surface, I couldn't make sense of it. I thought the physical contact would help me sort it out. I needed to _know _if you were being honest or if you were planning something devious."

"I'm always planning something devious."

"Not towards me, you weren't."

"No, I suppose not," he admits reluctantly. "So, reading thoughts is new? You can't do that with humans?"

"I don't know, I haven't tried."

—..—..—..—..—

His eyes go so wide he's surprised they don't fall out of his head. "You haven't _tried?_" he gasps, aghast. "What, with _anyone?_"

"It's happened once or twice that I can recall," she says slowly. "A long time ago, and I didn't know what was going on, but...I've never _tried_, no. And I've never gone much deeper than just basic motivations. Like, 'why are you doing this? oh, _that's _why,' sort of thing." She watches, worried, as he scoots back, away and out of reach. "What's wrong?"

"N-nothing, just..." He'd assumed she was okay with what she'd seen of his memories because she was used to seeing that sort of thing, the bits of people's pasts they'd rather cover up. But if this is her first time...there's really no way for _him_ to be sure that _she _isn't planning something. If they were both suspicious of each other, that would be one thing, but...well, he doesn't think she's the type to do something like that, but life experiences have taught him to keep his guard up at pretty much all costs.

He glances at her, sees her scowling hard, eyes closed, before her eyes fly open and meet his. That's all the warning he gets.

_Megamind_

He claps both hands to his ears, which is silly considering she hadn't actually said anything. "_OUT_," he says loudly, trying to ignore the rush of light and color and song that seems, incredibly, to be his name.

She sends him a confused jumble of image-sounds: pain and loss and people leaving, hard-eyed laughter, something that he thinks might be humiliation, followed by flashes of white and red that are probably an attempt at negation. _not hurt you_

"Out," he snaps. "Get OUT." _get out_

_Megamind_

He squeezes his eyes closed, shouts, _**STOP**_.

His voice crashes in her mind and she falls out and back into herself with a yelp. She opens her mouth to tell him she's sorry, she'd only wanted to try to show him because it's damn near impossible to lie mind-to-mind; she isn't sure how she knows that but she does. But all that comes out of her mouth is a shallow gasp of pain and then she has to close her eyes when the world tilts and throbs in her ears.

He hisses, angry. "Didn't you _just say_ I was allowed to have some _privacy_...are you okay?" Worry trumps anger when she slumps, gripping her head with both hands as she slowly crumples sideways onto the floor.

"D-didn't look at anythin'," she mumbles. "Promise. Didn't look. Wanted you to see. Not fair you don't see me...ow. Ow." That last bit is almost a whimper.

—..—..—..—..—

He sighs in exasperation, "You foolish woman," he scolds, without any rancor, "Psychic powers aren't toys." He crawls the few feet between them and picks her up in his arms. She whimpers and buries her face in his chest as he carries her to the couch. He lays her out with a pillow under her head, and then remains on the floor, kneeling at her side while she cradles her skull.

"What am I going to do with you, Roxanne?" he asks, not expecting an answer. He leans forward and brushes her hair back from her forehead with his bare hand and continues stroking it softly to soothe her. She said she'd wanted him to see. What did she want to show him? He reviews his memories of exactly what she'd sent him. Only two things with any coherence, the blazing song/feeling of his name and the less distinct idea of _not hurt you_. He hadn't felt that strange riffling through his thoughts sensation that he'd experienced last time, but he'd never been trained to detect or resist a psychic intrusion. Would he have noticed if she had? He doesn't know.

After a few minutes, she shifts herself and slowly sits up, her head still in her hands. She opens one eye, the unbruised one, and looks over at him sheepishly. "Sorry," she tells him, "That didn't work like it was supposed to."

"What were you trying to do?"

"Show you that you could trust me," she answers miserably.

"By forcing yourself into my head?"

"Okay, when you put it that way, maybe it wasn't such a good idea. But the way you looked at me, like I was some sort of dangerous _freak_." She looks at him straight-on with tears in her eyes, "I think I sort of panicked."

—..—..—..—..—

Ordinarily that would make him laugh, but he's just hurt her, and he's worried. He hadn't _meant_ to hurt her, but then...well, but then he rarely ever _means_ for the more innocuous things he does to turn out as badly as they do. He cocks an eyebrow. "Are you going to panic _every_ time people look at you like you're a freak? You know, if you're ever seen in public with _me_..." He shakes his head and his expression softens. "Well, your ears aren't bleeding so you'll probably be okay. But I may have given you a concussion, which means I'd like to keep an eye on you for at least another few hours. I'm sorry."

She sniffs and closes her eyes again, massaging her temples with her fingertips. "I could care less about _people_."

"Clearly," he says dryly.

"You're not people," she mumbles. "You don't count."

Okay, that one makes him blink and pull back, but it hadn't sounded like a slight or an insult. It sounded..._fond_, almost. Good lord, he's just hit her over the head with the psychic equivalent of a brick, and she's not holding it against him? He frowns down at his hands, suddenly aware of how little he still knows about how to actually interact with her. "I—I should explain, I didn't mean to hurt you like that—"

"I _know _that—"

"Let me finish," he exclaims, startling both of them by touching her lips. "Listen, mind-to-mind communication is not something _I've_ ever figure out how to initiate, but I don't think you're a _freak_. Roxanne, you're talking to a self-acknowledged freak whose line of work puts him in contact with a lot of _other_ freaky people, and I can say with some confidence that what _you_ can do? Is _really not that freaky_." He half-smiles, green eyes sparkling down at her. It's not eye contact, but it's close. "I was looking at you like that because...well, for one thing I am _incredibly_ amazed and flattered that you'd want to try that sort of connection with _me_, of all people, for the first time. And also because while I _don't _think you're going to actively try to hurt me—and as curious as I am to experiment with it, because communicating the way you do is unlike anything I've ever seen before—I'm not sure I want a completely untrained psychic cavorting around in my thoughts. You know?" His smile widens slightly as he very briefly meets her gaze and then quickly looks away again. "That's all."

—..—..—..—..—

"You're not mad at me?" she asks, her lips brushing feather-light against his fingers as she speaks.

"No," he answers, trying his best to reassure her, "I'm not mad at you at all." To prove it, he leans forward and replaces his fingers with his lips, showing her with a tender kiss just how not-mad he really is. It seems to do the trick, as she relaxes her body and leans into him. He breaks it off before the comfort gesture turns into a make-out session. He's not quite finished with this conversation. "I think we need to get you some training, though. It's not safe for you to continue learning by trial and error. Especially since you seem so fond of using _me_as your guin-e-a pig." Sitting back on his heels thinking, he taps a finger against his lips which are still damp from her kiss. "I'll have to make some calls," he decides.

"You know someone who can teach me?" She shouldn't be surprised. He knows a lot of people.

"I know several. Psychic abilities are actually pretty common. You know, among freaks," he teases, coaxing a smile out of her, "You're actually pretty normal. I just need to find a tutor I can trust with you."

"Thank you." She really is grateful. She'd considered consulting a psychic herself, but she didn't know the first thing about finding someone qualified to teach her. She didn't want to give her money to a charlatan.

"Well, I have to take care of my girlfriend," he answers. "That's part of my job now, right?" He crawls up onto the couch and squeezes between her an the armrest. His arm settles around her back as if that's where it belongs. Which, as far as he's concerned, it is.

She leans back against his side and closes her eyes contentedly, "You're going to be such a good boyfriend."

"Please. I am never _good_, my dear." He turns his head so that his lips are nearly touching her ear. His warm breath tickles as he continues in a low, seductive tone, "I am _fantastic_."

Her smile widens and she thinks she might just agree with him on that.

"Now, what would you like to do today?" he asks, abruptly changing topics, "I have some business to attend to this afternoon, but I can keep you company until lunchtime."

They ended up spending most of the next two and a half hours sitting very close together while they shared stories and learned more about each other. In the background, the video they meant to be watching played on, unnoticed. When he leaves, after a searing kiss that seriously tests their resolve to take things slowly, he promises to come back later that evening. He still doesn't entirely trust her. Not yet. But this is Roxanne. He doesn't think he could stay away if he tried.

It doesn't occur to Megamind to check in with Minion again until he's already halfway back to Evil Lair.


	6. Minion's Opinion

First free day in a while, so I'm going to try to get the rest of these up before dinner! Thanks for being so patient. ^^;

Also, is anybody here having issues getting notification emails, or is my account glitching again?

Still own nothing! And the first segment of this chapter is by me.

* * *

**Chapter 6: Minion's Opinion **

When he does, he's in considerably better spirits than he's been in a while, which Minion had been expecting. What he _hadn't_ expected was that the first thing out of Megamind's mouth would be: "She _kissed me!_"

All morning, he's been trying to think of ways to let his master and friend down gently—ways to remind him of his status and try to tell him not to get his hopes up without simultaneously reinforcing the idea that he'll never be normal enough to find a functional romantic relationship. He had planned on asking how physical Miss Ritchi had been with him, trying to get Megamind to think of maybe once or twice when she'd pulled away from him, knowing he would jump to the worst conclusions possible and hoping that would do the trick. While it's a little cruel, it's better than sitting back and watching him get hurt later on when this inevitably goes south. As much as the little fish likes Miss Ritchi, it's not in his nature to trust his charge to someone who has the potential to be extremely damaging. No. Better to end it now, before Megamind gets in too deep.

But the pleased exclamation renders his whole plan completely useless. Blinking, Minion asks carefully, "What, Sir? Y-you kissed her?"

"No—well, yes. Later. A _lot_. But she kissed me _first!_ And she let me touch her hair." Minion can _hear_ his face-splitting grin, and his heart sinks. "And-and there was _hugging_, and she says she wants to _date_ me and she called me her _boyfriend_, and...and Minion. Minion Minion. Guess."

He's very glad Megamind can't see the way he slumps into a chair with his tank in his hands. "No, Sir."

"She—what? Say again?"

He lifts his tank. "No, Sir," he says again, more firmly this time. "I'm not...I don't want to guess. You can't _do_ this. It won't _work_." There's no good way to say it, so he just lets the words fall flat. He'll pick up the pieces later; he always does and he always will. "You're the bad guy, remember? You don't get to...I mean, _she_wouldn't..."

"I really think she would, Minion."

He hears the warning note in his sir's voice and ignores it. He has had a long night full of worry, a long morning full of indignant anger and _more_ worry, and now he's just about ready to either snap or worry himself sick. "No. She wouldn't. And she _doesn't_. What's she going to say when she sees what you've done? Once she gets to know who you _really_are? She won't understand. She'll leave and you'll be devastated, I know you will be, and it just kills me to see you like that."

There's a brief pause, and then Megamind says, "Okay, but she already saw all that."

Minion's eyes narrow. "'Saw.'"

"She's psychic. Never trained, never recognized it before this. That's what I was going to tell you when you wouldn't guess."

—..—..—..—..—

"Wait, sir. Miss Ritchi is psychic? That can't be right. We're always sneaking up on her with the knock-out spray. If she was psychic she'd see us coming, but she hardly ever does." Minion is pleased with his logic. This must be some sort of trick the clever reporter is playing on his boss. Though he really isn't sure to what end.

"No, no, my fishy friend. She isn't _clairvoyant_," he clarifies. "She's an empath. Possibly a telepath, if she gets some training."

"How..." his eyes narrow in suspicion, "How exactly do you know that?"

"She showed me."

Oh, this is starting to sound bad, "Showed you how, sir?" he asks, forcing his voice to stay calm.

"She, uh..." He falters a bit and clears his throat before admitting, "got in my head."

"You _let_a psychic into your mind?!"

"Yes. Well, I let her the first two times anyway. The third intrusion wasn't exactly consensual—"

"She attacked you?!" The fish is starting to panic just a little, "Sir! Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he laughs, seemingly unconcerned, "She didn't hurt me."

"Sir..." he asks slowly, keeping his voice calm in the tones one might use when approaching a wild animal. "Is she controlling you? Is this what this whole _dating_thing is all about?"

"No! Of course not!"

"That's what she'd make you say if she were controlling you."

—..—..—..—..—

Megamind falters; that, at least, is a valid point. But it isn't true. It can't be. It _can't_. At least, he hopes it isn't. "B-but...no, I would have felt it if she'd planted something," he protests. "And the way the telepathy works...you can't lie like that, Minion. There are no walls."

The little fish pulls water deep across his gills. "Sir, I hope you don't think I'm saying nobody will ever want to date you, because that's _not_what I'm saying at all—"

"I know, Minion."

"Good, because _can you hear yourself?_" He both sounds and looks incredulous, never mind that Megamind can't actually see him. "I mean, really, you expect me to believe—do _you really_ believe—that she would trust you with that kind of access to _her_ mind after one night? Just _one_night?"

Guilty silence.

"Sir?"

"It...it wasn't just one night," Megamind finally says softly, and if Minion had had external ears they'd have fallen off his head.

"_What?_"

He sounds flustered. "Oh, like you've never bothered tracking me when I disappear at night. You know where I go!"

"But you never went _inside!_" Minion exclaims, flabbergasted. "O-only that once, on that awful birthday a couple years back when you went all maudlin and strange, but...I mean, not that the brainbots ever saw!"

"Minion, I just _told_ you," Megamind says flatly, cutting him off, and some distant part of Minion's brain manages to be amused that for once _he_ is freaking out and _Megamind_ is calm. That almost never happens. "She's an empath. Turns out she's been picking up on my emotional signature out there for years, but never realized it was me. We started corresponding a few months ago, first with notes and more recently via text message. She's been calling me her 'ghost.'"

—..—..—..—..—

"She thought you were a ghost?"

"She wasn't sure _what_I was at first. She just knew that I kept showing up but she never spotted me. She should have found it creepy, but I guess she could feel that I wouldn't hurt her." In the middle of his answer, his voice crackles with static as the invisible car rolls through the holographic entrance to Evil Lair and shimmers into visibility.

Minion stands and turns away from the control center towards the workshop. Megaming parks the car in it's accustomed spot right in the middle of the room and steps out. Several dozen brainbots surround him, delaying any further conversation with their bowg-bowgs and snapping jaws. He coos at them lovingly, rubbing domes and praising them lavishly. Eventually one slips a wrench into his hand and he obligingly throws it across the lair for them. The entire pack races for the tool and he chuckles as he watched his creations fight viciously over it.

Then he turns his beaming smile onto his friend and strides past him towards the far side of the lair. Minion follows him. "She was curious, so one night she left me a note out on the balcony where I usually stand. I couldn't figure out how she knew I'd been there, so I wrote her back to ask. After that we just sort of fell into a correspondence." Reaching a bookshelf on the wall, he pulls a section of false books back to reveal a security keypad. He ignores it entirely and instead pulls a hidden catch to open a compartment below it. The hidden safe is stuffed with cash in various denominations. He reaches in and counts out a large number of bills, mostly hundreds. While he counts, he continues, "Eventually, leaving notes on the balcony started getting ridiculous. It was obvious I wasn't a ghost, so she invited me to text her like a normal person." He smirks, as if there's some significance to the phrase. Money in hand, he closes up everything and calls out for a brainbot to bring him an envelope.

"That's why you insisted on my getting you a cell phone," Minion realizes. He had been confused by his boss's request two weeks ago, but had assumed it was part of some evil plan or other.

"Exactly, my piscean compatriot. We've been texting frequently ever since. Last night circumstances led to revealing my identity. She should have kicked me out, but she's always defied my expectations. She asked me to stay instead." He puts the disturbingly thick stack of currency into the brainbot-delivered manila envelope.

As he seals it, Minion eyes the package, "What are you doing with that money?" he asks.

"Sending it to Psycho Delic." He rattles off an address to the brainbot and reminds it to get a receipt. Then he pats the little bot's dome and it speeds away with a contingent of other brainbots following as guards.

"What are we paying Psycho Delic for?" the fish asks. He hates dealing with the mutant smoke man.

"I bought Roxanne's father from him," he answers, "We have a brand-new small arms dealer now."

—..—..—..—..—

Minion reels back. "We—you did—what? I don't...um." He stammers into silence, then cautiously asks, "Was that the best course of action, Sir?"

Megamind shrugs mildly. "I thought so, considering my other options were 'do nothing and watch Roxanne's father get killed when I could have helped' and 'do nothing and watch Roxanne's father come and beat her up again looking for money and _then _get killed when I could have helped.'"

"Oh." The little fish nods. "Well, in that case."

"I thought you'd say that," he grins up at his friend. "You know I'd ordinarily consult with you before dealing with Psycho in any sort of business sense, but this required my immediate attention. You understand."

"Of course I do," Minion assures him.

—..—..—..—..—

"Though, honestly, _I_couldn't care less if the man gets himself killed."

"Of course not, sir." Minion agrees.

"I mean, it's hardly _my_job to rescue idiots who take money from Psycho."

"No, sir."

"This wasn't a _good deed_ or anything. Quite the opposite. He _hurt_ Roxanne. I couldn't let that stand. It was an insult to touch what _everyone_ knows is mine. Ronald Ritchi isn't aware of it yet, but he is now in _my_debt." He raises his fist, index finger extended into the air. "He will rue the day he attracted the attention of the Master of All Villainy."

"I'm sure you're right," Minion agrees, then continues more gently. "How badly did he hurt Miss Ritchi?"

Megamind's expression darkens, "She has a black eye, a sprained wrist, assorted bruises. Nothing serious enough to seek medical attention. But she should _never_have been harmed at all. What's worse is that he's done it before. He's been abusive towards her since she was a kid and no one has ever stopped him. Not her mother, not her teachers, not the police, not Mr. Goody-two-shoes. No one. She's been completely on her own."

The sympathetic little fish's heart twists in his chest. Both aliens know what it's like to face that kind of abuse and worse. The prison had had many men who acted as unofficial guardians to the two aliens when they were young, but they hadn't be around all the time. There were plenty of other inmates who wanted nothing more than to inflict pain any way they thought they could get away with. Gifted criminals who knew how to get away with things.

Minion hates the knowledge that Miss Ritchi had gone through something similar. It seems more horrible, somehow, outside of the prison gates. In a prison, violence and evil is expected. It belongs there. It doesn't belong in a home between a father and daughter. Minion's protective instincts well up and it is impossible for him to think of Miss Ritchi as a threat right now.

"She's not alone anymore," the fish offers.

"No, my fishy friend. She isn't."

—

At six o'clock in the afternoon, soon after she usually gets home from work, Roxanne's phone rings. She scrambles through her purse for the tiny thing and opens it on the fourth ring, just before it rolls over to voicemail. In her haste, she doesn't check the caller ID, but expects the friendly voice of her new, blue boyfriend. "Hello?" she answers cheerfully.

"What did you do, little girl?" her father's voice growls at her from the other end of the line.

Her hand drifts self-consciously to her bruised eye and she glances towards her front door. It's securely locked and the chain is latched.

"I talked to a friend," she tells him with a confidence she doesn't feel, "If you touch me again, you'll wish you hadn't." she clicks the clamshell closed to end the call. She crawls onto the couch and texts Megamind. Then she calls downstairs to warn Carlos not to let her father into the building if he shows up. She knows she's safe where she is, but it doesn't stop the shaking as she sits with her arms wrapped tight around her knees.


	7. An End

This one starts with Karen's section! I really have to hand it to her, she is _way_ better at the whole informational narrative thing than I am. The way I write tends to drag things out through dialogue and action, which is good sometimes but I think lengthens things unnecessarily? There are a lot of times I find myself thinking, _but can't I just say what happens next without actually going into it?_ Karen is really good at doing that, which is good, because I am just _awful_ at it. XD

Oh, and there's some swearing in this chapter. Just a heads-up.

We own nothing! Nothing at all!

* * *

**Chapter 7: An End**

Megamind visits Roxanne every night that week up until Friday. That night he gets arrested, but returns on Sunday afternoon as if nothing had happened. She returns to work on Monday, her yellow bruise easily concealed from everyone.

They fall into a routine where Megamind will arrive, usually by her balcony, around six thirty to share dinner and spend a few hours in her company before he reluctantly leaves her for the evening. Sometimes Minion comes along, sometimes not. They're careful to include him and not make him feel unwelcome. The evenings when they're alone begin to stretch later and later into the night and they find it increasingly difficult to part ways. It's only a matter of time, of course. On a Thursday evening during the third week they're together Megamind admits that he loves her and she says she feels the same. That night they become lovers.

That same week he introduces her to Nico, a self-described gypsy, though she has her doubts as to whether that ancestry is authentic. Megamind whisks her in unseen through the back of a little shop to a private room where Nico usually reads fortunes and conducts séances. Though most of his work is theatrics rather than spiritualism, the man really is psychic and they meet together twice a week for a month while Roxanne masters the basics. Nico tells her that using psychic powers is like driving a car, you have to learn the rules and how everything works, but after that it's just a matter of practice.

She refuses to visit the aliens at Evil Lair and insists that they don't even tell her where it is. "Plausible deniability," she explains, and discourages them from telling her anything specific about any upcoming evil plans. "After you've done it, you can tell me all about it. But don't tell me any of it ahead of time."

Megamind's epic battles of evil against good become fewer and farther between. He just can't muster the same enthusiasm for the game without her participation. Also, each time Metro Man hauls him off to prison, that's a few days that he doesn't get to be with her. This early in their new relationship, any absence is painful and they tend to spend their time apart mooning over each other.

The people that work with Roxanne notice the change in her behavior and quickly guess she has a new boyfriend. When she refuses to share any details, they whisper that there must be something wrong with him. Probably married, they guess, delighting over the imagined scandal. The only one who doesn't notice is Hal Stuart, who continues to hit on her with the same optimistic regularity as before.

It takes Metro Man two months to suspect that something has changed. Eventually, compelled to learn what's going on, he uses his powers to spy on Roxanne's apartment after spotting brainbots crouched on her building. He watches on and off for several days as the pair meet up after Roxanne gets home from work and go about their evening activities. He always turns away when they slip off to the bedroom because spying on _that _is beneath him. It's clear that neither is coerced and that both are perfectly comfortable and happy in the other's company. It seems incongruent to watch the little guy act like an ordinary man with his girlfriend. He's conflicted on what to do about the situation and is surprised at his own reluctance to expose them and destroy their happiness. It's clear that he and the supervillain need to have a talk.

Megamind doesn't have any warning when it happens. One moment he's slipping out onto the balcony so his brainbots can fly him down to his car. The next instant Roxanne's patio chair creaks as Metro Man just appears in it, seated with his crossed ankles propped on the matching table. The first thing out of the hero's mouth is a question. "How long?"

—..—..—..—..—

He jumps halfway out of his skin and whips around, breathing hard—it isn't like him to let his guard down, but he really hadn't been expecting Metro Man to show up _here_, of all places. "Can you _maybe _not do that here?" he hisses. "The whole Batman routine is getting very old."

"It's not the only thing," Metro Man replies, making Megamind pull back a little and blink a few times, "but I dunno about 'very.' Seriously, though, how long?"

Megamind just gives him a dirty look and vaults neatly over the rail. Metro Man isn't prepared for _that_, and he jolts out of his chair and leaps after the little guy in a panic only to feel very silly indeed when he sees him flitting away with a cadre of brainbots. So he follows down the street and into an alley, where the bots drop Megamind by what can only be the invisible car. It flickers into the visible spectrum, and Megamind hops inside without a word and slams the door after him. The conversation is clearly over.

Except he doesn't pull away. He sits with the car idling in the alleyway until Metro Man finally shrugs and climbs awkwardly in the passenger seat, and _then _he puts the car in gear and peels backwards onto the street. "Months. Never mind how many." He doesn't look at Metro Man, doesn't see the hero looking supremely uncomfortable on the other side of the car. Before, Metro Man had the advantage; he still has the villain off his guard but at least now they're on Megamind's turf. "I've been visiting her for years, we corresponded without meeting for ages, and we've been dating for months now. Nice of you to finally catch on. What tipped you off?" They squeal around a corner quickly and sharply enough to make Metro Man plant a hand on the roof and the door with a gasp.

"Th—Okay, can you stop that?" he demands. "With the turning and the braking and the lead foot? I startled you, okay, we're even. I'm gonna be sick on your upholstery if you don't stop it." For all his aerial maneuvers, he has never been good at being a passenger.

Megamind doesn't reply, but he does slow down enough to start using his turn signals, and that's something.

"I dunno, little buddy, you were so quiet for a while there. I thought for sure you had something big up your sleeve and you were just biding your time like usual, but it wasn't adding up—my contacts said you were being _way _quieter than normal." He rolls his eyes. "And then I saw brainbots on her building. Started following you about a week ago. Seriously? You two are—"

"Yes, yes," Megamind cuts him off with a nasty edge to his voice, "big surprise to everyone. What are you, going to threaten me? Going to warn me away again?"

It's like Metro Man didn't even notice. "—I mean, frickin' _finally_, jeez louise, it took you long enough," he snaps, and Megamind's whole upper body turns so fast he accidentally bonks the side of his head against the top of the windshield.

"_What?_" he gasps. "But...you _said_, you _always_ said if I went anywhere near her _that way _you'd wring my skinny neck. I heard you."

"Oh, and I _totally _expected you to listen." There's a surprising amount of sarcasm in his reply. "Yeah. Sure. I figured you knew what I meant. If you hurt her."

"You did _not _mean 'if you hurt her,'" he snaps. "You meant 'stay away.'"

"Don't you put words in my mouth," Metro Man warns. "Don't you dare. I didn't think she'd go for you, and I didn't want you misinterpreting her, and I figured it would be easier for both of you if you just never bothered with those sorts of feelings. You generally aren't very good with emotions or trusting people. Where are we going?"

"Not the Lair; what am I, stupid? And don't change the subject." They hang a left. "Are you _serious?_ What are you, her brother? You know, _I'm _not the one you should have been protecting her from. And screw you with my emotions, you don't know me."

Metro Man heaves a long-suffering sort of sigh. "Look. I just want to know what you're planning. She's not my girlfriend but she _is _important to me, so if this is all some sort of weird game on your part..."

"It's not."

He waits for more of a response, but that's all Megamind says. "You sure? 'Cause I'm really confused, here, and an explanation would really—"

"I never thought I could have this, you know," he says abruptly. If Metro Man is bent on having this conversation, they might as well get all of it out of the way. "A girlfriend. A life that doesn't revolve around constant scheming. Something that resembles normality. Never really thought that would ever be an option, and I...I mean, villainy was the only place I could at least _pretend _I was happy. And—"

He nearly explodes. "Are you kidding? You're a hugely successful pain in my ass, what the heck do you have to be _sad _about?"

Megamind peers at him curiously. "What makes you think I _need_ something to be sad about? I wasn't happy, that's all there is to it. I can be sad for no reason. I don't need a reason to be sad."

—..—..—..—..—

"Okaaay... You actually _want _the normal, boring wife and a house with a picket fence life?"

"More than you can possibly imagine," he answers seriously, the muscles in his jaw clenching and his gloved hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather creak.

"Wouldn't you be bored out of your giant blue mind?"

He stares straight ahead. When he speaks, his voice is low and carefully neutral, "I remember that my people paired off into couples. I think they married, like humans. Why is it strange that I might want a chance to do the same?"

The silence stretches out long and uncomfortable. Traffic slows around them and Megamind is forced by the car in front of him to stop for the light. He glares at it for daring to delay him, then reaches forward to press a green button on the dashboard. Two seconds later (much sooner than it should have) the light in front of them turns green and traffic moves forwards. Metro Man rolls his eyes and looks out the side window to find a boy in the next car over pointing excitedly at him through his window. The boy's mother looks over and is clearly surprised and then appalled to see him sitting in Megamind's car. _This doesn't look good_, he thinks, covering his eyes in dismay. He opens his mouth to ask Megamind to flip on the invisibility mode, but before he can, Megamind says in a soft, determined voice, "I won't give her up."

"I wasn't going to ask you to, little buddy," he answers, his audience forgotten.

Megamind makes a sharp left-hand turn into a gravel alley that leads to another street. Rocks fly up behind them as he punches the gas. "Then why are you talking to me?"

"I don't know. I guess I just wanted to know what was going on." He braces his feet on the floor, anticipating another sharp turn coming up.

"Well, now you know." Hitting the next street, he turns right, fishtailing slightly and causing traffic to swerve to avoid him. He grins hard. "Hell has frozen over and I have a girlfriend. Obviously, the world is coming to an end."

"You're putting words in my mouth again."

Megamind doesn't answer. He pulls into the parking lot of a Dunkin' Donuts and heads to the drive-thru lane. He revs the engine twice and the two cars in front of him in line scatter, leaving the speaker clear for him. He rolls down the window and orders two of the largest coffees they have and a dozen assorted donuts. Metro Man is surprised that he actually pays for the order when he gets to the window. Megamind tosses the box carelessly into the backseat, sets one coffee into a cupholder, and hands the other to his passenger. Then he tears off into traffic again. Metro Man narrowly avoids spilling coffee all over his uniform.

Once they're headed steadily in one direction again, the big man relaxes enough to continue the conversation. "It'll come out eventually. What will you do then?"

"We'll figure it out when it happens."

"She'll lose her job," the hero predicts.

Megamind nods, sparing a glance at Metro Man. "She knows. She says TV news girls have a limited shelf life anyway. She's expecting it."

"You two gonna be like Bonnie and Clyde, then?" he asks, keeping his tone carefully light.

"You know how that ended, right?" Megamind responds seriously.

"Why do you think I'm concerned?" It's the main thing Metro Man's worried about. That Megamind will corrupt his friend, dragging her into his life of crime.

—..—..—..—..—

This is weird enough already, and Metro Man's apparent concern for Roxanne is what finally makes Megamind lose his temper. He's been trying to stay calm, trying to keep his voice low and remain civil, but he and Metro Man just go too far back for that. He blows his top. "Look, you think I _wanted_ to be locked into a life of evilness and crime? Maybe you don't remember, but I do. I remember the fact that I was evil being _beaten into me_ by adults and children alike all throughout the never-ending fuckup that was my excuse for a childhood. They told me—_you_ told me!" he corrects himself suddenly, much to Metro Man's surprise. "To my _face! Twice!_—that I would never be normal, I didn't have a chance, and I should give up now and stop trying to fight it."

"But—" he tries to say, but Megamind steamrolls right over him.

"So you know what I did?" he demands, breathing hard through his nose, suddenly quiet. "_I gave up._ I said, fine. You know what? Fine. I guess, if _everyone_ says I'm a bad person and a failure and a screw-up and I'll never amount to anything as long as I live...well, I guess they must be right. But there was one thing everyone agreed I was good at, and that was being _evil_. So that's what I did. I gave up trying to be good, and focused on being as evil as I possibly could be. _Not_ because that's who I am," he hisses. "_But because that's who you _told_ me I was!_ And I _believed_ you! Do you have any idea how _sick _that is? Do you?"

There's a brief silence during which Metro Man tries his hardest to figure out how to respond. It was easier when Megamind was yelling a moment ago, ranting and raving at him the way he usually does, but now he's speaking in this incredibly controlled, shaking tone of voice that's so much worse than when he was yelling. He sounds half-desperate. Frantic, almost.

"All my life you've told me this. You and all the others. And can I just say, fuck you. _Fuck you_. Because I've finally got something _good_ for once in my life, just _once_ in my _entire life_ I have something that makes me actively _happy_. And for the first time since I was nine years old, I'm starting to believe that maybe—just _maybe_—I've been wrong about myself." He rakes in a breath and slams a hand against the wheel. "I'm starting to see myself the way _she_ sees me. I could _be someone_." He pauses for a few seconds. "I could...I could be someone. I could help people. I _could_," he whispers, and Metro Man knows it's true.

Suddenly the car screeches to a halt. "Out," Megamind says shortly, and then he and his coffee have vanished out the door. Metro Man follows a second later, blinking and looking around.

"Uh," he says. "Where are we...?"

"Corner of South Bend and Orville. Here, hold this," and he shoves his coffee at Metro Man's broad chest—this time, it spills a little.

"Oh, for...!" Then he blinks upwards and stops just short of swearing. Megamind is shimmying easily up the street light on the corner. He makes quick work of it, too; it only takes him a few seconds to reach the top and then he's sitting on it looking just as cool as you please, like he's done this all his life. He lets his head fall back a little, lifts his face to the cold drizzle and heaves a sigh.

"Well," he says without looking down. "Come on up. Or were you going to hold my coffee hostage down there? Bring the doughnuts, too; we might as well eat some of them as long as we're here."

Now totally bewildered, Metro Man drifts up to the section of the light that extends over the street and perches there. He doesn't cut the weightlessness, so the arm of the post doesn't break or bend under his considerable weight. "What are we doing here?"

"This is a fairly deserted corner," Megamind says by way of explanation. "I like watching the lights change. Helps me think."

"I didn't know you needed help with that," Metro Man tries to joke, and half of the other's mouth lifts into a weak smile.

"Yes," he agrees. "That's really the problem, isn't it?"

He's not sure what that means, so he just stays quiet. He's beginning to recognize a pattern: if he doesn't say anything, Megamind will talk to end the silence.

"You didn't know I need help. Heaven's sake, _I_didn't know I needed help. But there it is." He sighs again and finally looks up at Metro Man, who automatically extends the box of doughnuts like it's some sort of peace offering. Incredibly, Megamind smiles and takes one. "Thanks. And help yourself, by the way; I figure you're probably more of a protein guy but these are the best doughnuts in this entire city, I swear. I just...I'm sick of it."

He blinks, jokes, "What, the doughnuts?"

Megamind chuckles, then gestures from Metro Man to himself, then around at their surroundings. "You. Me. This. Us." He shrugs. "I'm sick of the whole stupid game. I have been for a while, now." He finishes his doughnut but instead of reaching for another, looks down at his hands in his lap, suddenly nervous. "If...if I were to just...stop. All of it. If I were to pay my fines, return my ill-gotten gains, and...and start over? Maybe...start my own company, or...start doing research, I don't know. Would you stop me?"

Metro Man stares at him for a few stunned seconds, and then he breathes for what feels like the first time that night. "Are you kidding? That would be so incredibly amazingly _awesome_. Heck, I'll advocate for you if you want me to. And I'll be your first investor if your company goes public! I know better than anybody that anything you make is frickin' _gold_." Megamind turns and blinks at him, bewildered. "C'mon, little buddy. You _know_ you're the only reason I haven't started trying to hang up the cape already."

—..—..—..—..—

"Hang up the—" Megamind's foot slips on his mist-slick perch and he has to throw out a hand to steady himself. He drops his coffee and it lands on the sidewalk below with a wet splat. "You want to quit too? But you're the _good _guy." He leans forward and swipes Metro Man's coffee from him as a replacement.

"And I'm sick of it!" Metro Man exclaims. "Do you know how draining it is to have to babysit a whole city of helpless people 24/7? You wouldn't believe the stupid things they expect me to rescue them from! Just last week I caught a jumper falling from Metro Tower only to find out he wasn't suicidal at all. His friend had bet him a hundred bucks that I wouldn't catch him."

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not! I swear, I was this close," he holds his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, "to tossing him off that tower again myself."

"That doesn't sound very heroic to me," he observes, sipping his stolen coffee.

"Well, I didn't _do_it. I'm not that far gone yet. But I was tempted." He pulls out a white-frosted doughnut and begins to eat it, closing the box again against the drizzle. He grins and speaks with his mouth half-full. "I did confiscate their hundred bucks, though. Told them gambling on suicide was illegal."

"HA!"

"But that's not the point. Most of what I do doesn't even _require_ superpowers. The police and firefighters _should_ be able to handle most of my job. The only thing they _really_ need me for is dealing with you. But that's not how it works. I'm permanently on-call and they send me out for _everything_. It doesn't even occur to them anymore that a fireman can rescue people from a burning building or that a SWAT team can take out a gunman in a hostage situation."

Megamind takes the box from Metro Man and balances it on the arm of the traffic light post as he pokes through it for something with a jelly filling. "Speaking _as_a gunman frequently involved in hostage situations, I'd like to say that I've always appreciated that about the MCPD." Finding what he's looking for, he takes a bite and swallows before asking, "Why don't you tell them to go fuck themselves?"

"It's my responsibility. I'm under contract." Finishing his doughnut, the hero brushes the crumbs off his hands and says, "But I've really just been going through the motions for awhile now. I don't really even care anymore. I was considering letting my contract lapse, but I can't just quit. Not while you're still going strong. There'd be no one to stop you."

"So?"

"So, what would people think of me?"

"Right. You wouldn't want to tarnish your prestine reputation," he snarks.

They both watch silently as an eighties sedan rolls through the intersection, the driver staring up at the two supers on the lightpost the whole way. Megamind smirks, "He ran the red light."

"I don't think he noticed."

"You should give him a ticket."

"I'm on a coffee break."

"Proof that you _do _belong on the Metrocity police force. Doughnut?" he asks, holding out the box.

"Funny," he snaps, ignoring the offer. He stares off towards the east where the sky is lightening despite the overcast and the mist. "It could work, you know. If we quit together. We could, I don't know, coordinate it?"

—..—..—..—..—

Ordinarily that suggestion would elicit some sort of "I don't make deals with heroes" crack, but this time Megamind is quiet for a long moment before he slowly agrees, "That...could work. What are the terms of your contract?"

"Oh, I can quit anytime," Metro Man assures him. "But I have to _quit_. All the way. I can still save people if I want to, but if I'm not a hero then I'm personally liable for any damages. And I can't operate outside the law anymore."

Megamind bites his lip. "I don't think I'll be able to stop operating outside the law."

To his surprise, Metro Man snorts and replies, "Oh, I'm counting on it. What, you think I'm stupid? I know what you've been up to in your free time. I might be the only hero in town, but I'm not the only one protecting the people here."

Megamind flushes. "You noticed that."

"Yeah, I did, and _thanks_." He sounds totally sincere. "Thanks for making my life not a complete living hell, I appreciate it. I don't know if I could deal with calls from little old ladies to open jars of pickles _and _manage the underground without totally losing my mind."

"Has that actually—"

"_Twice_."

He stares, not sure if he should laugh or offer the bigger man a drink. "You're joking."

"I wish. Little buddy, I _am _a joke." He throws his hands up, exasperated. "That's my whole problem. At least they take you seriously!"

"Bah!" Megamind says dully, passing him the coffee. Sharing a drink with his ex-arch-nemesis is not something he really has a problem with. "No, they don't. The underground circles do, but the citizens? Bah! I say, and Bah! again."

"Bah," Metro Man agrees. "I'll drink to that." He does. Then he chuckles.

Megamind looks at him, half-smiling. "What?"

"Nothing. 'S just. _You_." He shakes his head. "I'm sitting on a lamppost with my archenemy, discussing our mutual retirement. This is so bizarre."

"It's kinda weird," Megamind agrees. "But I prefer to think of myself as your nemesis. We haven't been _enemies _in quite some time."

"No, we haven't been, have we?" Metro Man peers at him, sobering somewhat. Then, out of the clear blue sky, he says, "I put you through hell, didn't I? Back in school. We all did, but...well, I didn't exactly discourage it."

Megamind's jaw tightens and his smile fades. "Yes," he says shortly. "Why?"

Metro Man shrugs gently. "I'm sorry, is why. I think about that a lot. You'd be surprised."

There's a long pause while Megamind tries to think of how to respond to that. Just as he opens his mouth, though, Metro Man adds, "I mean...you and me, we could have been friends. If I didn't blow it."

Megamind might have thrown that in his face, once upon a time, but things have changed. Over the past couple of months, _he _has changed in a million tiny ways—one of those ways is that he thinks maybe it's time he started giving certain people the benefit of the doubt. So what comes out of his mouth next is the single most incredible thing either of them has ever heard him say.

"...There's still time. Maybe."

—..—..—..—..—

"Maybe?"

"Well, for some unfathomable reason Roxanne likes you. So, it's probably best if we _try _to get along."

"For Roxy's sake."

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

"You know, if you hurt her, I'm still going to have to wring your neck."

Megamind scoffs and tosses the box of doughnuts to the sidewalk. Then he turns stomach to the bar and, in a gymnast's move, rocks back to hang from his hands before dropping to the street below. Retrieving his doughnuts he says, "Well, I better get back home and bring her these." He indicates the box in his hand, "She's probably still asleep." It is Saturday morning, after all. "If you want to come by later, once Minion shows up, we can discuss coordinating my last evil plan."

"Why does it have to be an _evil _plan?" The hero asks as he drifts toward the ground.

"It involves a superhero giving up and a supervillain getting off nearly scot-free. It has to be an evil plan." He grins and walks to his car. This time after he slams the door, he flips the car to its invisible mode before peeling out. Metro Man guesses that means the conversation is over for now.


	8. Epilogue

The epilogue only has two parts! First one is mine, second is Karen's. This story was a lot of fun to write—I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together! I think it turned out pretty well, especially considering the total lack of planning that went into it. XD

* * *

**Epilogue**

"...And so, I regret to inform you all that as of ten o'clock this morning, I officially retired as Hero of Metro City."

There is immediate outcry, as he had known there would be. He talks over it. "I will continue to work with the MCPD for some months on a consulting basis, but—"

"But what about _Megamind?_" An unusually shrill voice manages to make itself heard above the din of unsettled citizenry.

Metro Man blinks at the crowd. "What about him?"

"You can't just abandon us to him!"

Now he grins. He can't really help it. If the pocket dimension the villain installed in his cape works...

"Well, funny story about that," he begins, holding his cape out to the side and giving it a vigorous shake. Megamind tumbles out of the folds, which is good, because the action would have looked incredibly silly if he hadn't. "I didn't think that would work," he blurts.

"Oh, have a little faith," Megamind says stiffly. Then he faces the crowd and takes the microphone Metro Man passes him, taps it, blows into it. Grins sharply; he's always had a fondness for audio equipment.

"Well," he says. "Fine, fair citizens. Fear not! For I, too, shall be...

"Oh, you know what, screw the speechy song and dance. I'm just done. You guys. I'm done. We," he confirms, pointing between him and the hero, "are done. With you _and_each other. That's all! The end! Enjoy your boring little normal lives!"

He throws a smoke grenade at his feet and wraps both fists in Metro Man's cape. "Now, go!" he hisses. "Go, go!" And for once, Metro Man does as he says. It's the first of these speeches where he hasn't had to hang around afterwards and be social, and it makes a nice change.

Roxanne is waiting on the roof of a nearby building with the hoverbike, a wide, joyful smile, and open arms. "You're free," she exclaims as Metro Man drops Megamind on his feet. "Oh...my goodness, I almost didn't think you two would really go through with it."

"Well," Metro Man says—because Megamind is too busy hugging his girlfriend to respond properly—"He's not the only one who was sick of it all. Figured we might as well start looking out for each other, since we both seem to want the same thing and we were most of each other's reasons for not getting it."

"That whole sentence made zero sense," Megamind announces. Metro Man grins.

"Yeah, well. I'm glad you're on my side, little buddy, that's all."

He grimaces the way he always does at any mention of the strange alliance that has sprung up between them. "Likewise, I suppose."

He takes a deep breath, lets it out, glances up at the clouds. It really is a beautiful day. "Well, I expect you have a lot to talk about, so I'll be off. See you around, you two."

"Yes," Megamind agrees, not looking away from Roxanne. "Yes, 'talk about.'"

"Bye," Roxanne says as he lifts off, "and thanks again!" Then she bumps her forehead against Megamind's, touches noses with him. Brushes a kiss across his lips as she slides her hands down to his waist. "Talk, huh."

His eyes are shining as he smirks at her. "Oh, yes. A long, long talk, somewhere that isn't here. With a door."

"Mmm, but you'll have to leave the spiked boots outside or you'll tear my sofa again."

At that, he blinks and offers her a quiet smile. "A-actually," he says shyly, "I was thinking this time...we could go to my place. Now that you don't have to worry about plausible deniability anymore. If that's okay."

"Okay?" She pauses, then kisses him again, smiling against his mouth. "That sounds just...about..._perfect_."

It still isn't exactly _normal_, but he's not about to mess with perfection.

-..-..-..-..-

Three days later Roxanne has just wrapped up her live interview of the Chief of Police about the dual retirement of the city's super rivals. She and her cameraman, Hal Stuart, walk down the steps in front of the side entrance to the 4th street police station. The van is parked halfway down the block at the curb and they make their way towards it.

"So, I was thinking," says Hal out of the blue, "It's quitting time, but it's such a nice day. What do you say we go down to the Coffee Cabana over on 5th and sit out on the patio awhile? My treat." He smiles at her hopefully.

"That's sweet, Hal, but it's kind of late in the day for coffee," she answers with her usual evasiveness.

"Oh, yeah, that's fine. No coffee." He frowns, obviously thinking, and then grins as he says, "Hey! We could go out for burgers instead, if you want. There's a place over on-"

"No, Hal." She sighs, not really wanting to hurt the guy's feelings, but this has really gone on long enough. "You're a really great guy, but I already have a boyfriend."

"Oh, right. Metro Man," he mutters, looking down at his feet, "I guess I can't really compete with him. You'll probably get to see a lot more of him now, since he's retired."

She considers letting him believe that, but it's still a lie, even if it's only a lie of omission. And really, she's tired of everyone thinking she's Metro Man's girlfriend. Since he retired, there isn't really any good reason to continue the deception. "I'm not seeing Metro Man," she tells him.

"You're not?" He perks up. He can't really compete with a superhero, but a regular guy? Maybe there's still hope. "Well, the offer still stands. I'll take you out and you can tell me about this new guy of yours."

"No. I'm still gonna pass." She tells him, inching away from him uncomfortably. They've reached the curb next to the van. She opens the battered passenger door and lays the microphone in the seat.

"Okay, that's cool," he answers, walking around the van and opening his own door. He sets his camera in the case behind his seat. "Maybe some other time?"

"Hal..." she begins, but then sighs and doesn't continue. What can she say that will deter him without being mean? It turns out she doesn't have to. A distinctive black car covered in spiked, chrome crests pulls around the van and parks at the curb. Hal's eyes nearly fall out of his head and he lets out an involuntary little gibbering squeak. He isn't at all prepared when she smiles and says, "Looks like my ride's here. He's such a show-off. Less than a block from the police station?" She shakes her head, but doesn't appear very upset. Luckily, the lot where the squad cars park is on the other side of the building and, at present, there aren't any police around. The coast is clear.

Hal has a perfect view of the side of the infamous blue man's head through the rear window. He's grinning at Roxanne. "But th-that's Megamind!" he whispers.

"Yup. See you tomorrow." She slams the van door and he watches in disbelief as she calmly walks to the villain's car, opens the passenger door, and slides inside. The car shimmers into invisibility, but not before Hal watches the criminal plant a casual kiss on his partner's cheek. The red-head's stomach clenches in fear and anger as he watches the slight distortion that is the invisible car pull swiftly into traffic. "What is wrong with her?! He's the bad guy!" He slams his hand furiously into the steering wheel, "Ow! Stupid van! Broke my hand!" He starts the engine and squeals off, forcing the cars in the lane beside him to swerve out of the way.

When he tells his boss about Roxanne's new boyfriend, no one believes him, but they accept his transfer request to be assigned to a different reporter.


End file.
